{"id":6131,"date":"2026-06-19T11:54:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T01:54:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/?post_type=article&p=6131"},"modified":"2026-06-19T11:54:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T01:54:23","slug":"principals-post-on-empowering-young-women-22","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/article\/principals-post-on-empowering-young-women-22\/","title":{"rendered":"Principal’s Post on Empowering Young Women"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Since 1935, Our Lady of Mercy Catholic College has held a legacy of instilling the values of leadership, excellence and service, nurturing confident young women. We empower our girls to make their make on society with confidence and compassion.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Engaging the fine motor system to produce letters by hand has positive effects on learning and memory <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Synopsis – Why Handwriting Still Matters for Learning<\/strong>

As more schoolwork shifts onto laptops and tablets, researchers are asking an important question: What happens in the brain when we type instead of write by hand? A recent study with university students offers helpful insight and a clear message for schools and families.

When students handwrote words using a digital pen, their brains showed far richer and more complex activity than when they typed the same words on a keyboard. Handwriting activated strong connections in areas linked to memory, attention, and long\u2011term learning. This happens because handwriting requires the brain to coordinate visual information, fine\u2011motor control, and precise hand movements, creating the kind of deep processing that helps new learning stick. Typing, while efficient, doesn\u2019t stimulate the same level of neural engagement.

The researchers\u2019 recommendation is clear:

Children need regular handwriting practice from an early age to build the brain networks that support strong learning.<\/strong>

This doesn\u2019t mean choosing between handwriting and technology. Instead, it\u2019s about using each tool in the right context. For example:

– Handwriting<\/strong> is often better for note\u2011taking, planning, and learning new material.
– Typing<\/strong> is ideal for drafting essays, research, and final presentation of work.

At school, we are committed to maintaining this balance. Families can support this at home by encouraging handwritten notes, journaling, or planning on paper.

The full article is below, entitled \u201cHands-on\u201d and has been included in the May 2024 issue of Scientific American by Charlotte Hu and edited by Lauren J Young (21 February 2024).<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Handwriting notes in class might seem like an anachronism as smartphones and other digital technology subsume every aspect of learning across schools and universities. But a steady stream of research continues to suggest that taking notes the traditional way\u2014with pen and paper or even stylus and tablet\u2014is still the best way to learn, especially for young children. And now scientists are finally zeroing in on why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent study in Frontiers in Psychology<\/em><\/a> monitored brain activity in students taking notes and found that those writing by hand had higher levels of electrical activity across a wide range of interconnected brain regions responsible for movement, vision, sensory processing and memory. The findings add to a growing body of evidence that has many experts speaking up about the importance of teaching children to handwrite words and draw pictures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Differences in Brain Activity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new research, by Audrey van der Meer and Ruud van der Weel at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), builds on a foundational 2014 study<\/a>. That work suggested that people taking notes by computer were typing without thinking, says van der Meer<\/a>, a professor of neuropsychology at NTNU. \u201cIt\u2019s very tempting to type down everything that the lecturer is saying,\u201d she says. \u201cIt kind of goes in through your ears and comes out through your fingertips, but you don\u2019t process the incoming information.\u201d But when taking notes by hand, it\u2019s often impossible to write everything down; students have to actively pay attention to the incoming information and process it\u2014prioritize it, consolidate it and try to relate it to things they\u2019ve learned before. This conscious action of building onto existing knowledge can make it easier to stay engaged and grasp new concepts<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand specific brain activity differences during the two note-taking approaches, the NTNU researchers tweaked the 2014 study\u2019s basic setup. They sewed electrodes into a hairnet with 256 sensors that recorded the brain activity of 36 students as they wrote or typed 15 words from the game Pictionary that were displayed on a screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When students wrote the words by hand, the sensors picked up widespread connectivity across many brain regions. Typing, however, led to minimal activity, if any, in the same areas. Handwriting activated connection patterns spanning visual regions, regions that receive and process sensory information and the motor cortex. The latter handles body movement and sensorimotor integration, which helps the brain use environmental inputs to inform a person\u2019s next action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you are typing, the same simple movement of your fingers is involved in producing every letter, whereas when you\u2019re writing by hand, you immediately feel that the bodily feeling of producing A is entirely different from producing a B,\u201d van der Meer says. She notes that children who have learned to read and write by tapping on a digital tablet \u201coften have difficulty distinguishing letters that look a lot like each other or that are mirror images of each other, like the b and the d.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reinforcing Memory and Learning Pathways<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sophia Vinci-Booher<\/a>, an assistant professor of educational neuroscience at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the new study, says its findings are exciting and consistent with past research. \u201cYou can see that in tasks that really lock the motor and sensory systems together, such as in handwriting, there\u2019s this really clear tie between this motor action being accomplished and the visual and conceptual recognition being created,\u201d she says. \u201cAs you\u2019re drawing a letter or writing a word, you\u2019re taking this perceptual understanding of something and using your motor system to create it.\u201d That creation is then fed back into the visual system, where it\u2019s processed again\u2014strengthening the connection between an action and the images or words associated with it. It\u2019s similar to imagining something and then creating it: when you materialize something from your imagination (by writing it, drawing it or building it), this reinforces the imagined concept and helps it stick in your memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The phenomenon of boosting memory by producing something tangible has been well studied. Previous research<\/a> has found that when people are asked to write, draw or act out a word that they\u2019re reading, they have to focus more on what they\u2019re doing with the received information. Transferring verbal information to a different form, such as a written format, also involves activating motor programs in the brain to create a specific sequence of hand motions, explains Yadurshana Sivashankar<\/a>, a cognitive neuroscience graduate student at the University of Waterloo in Ontario who studies movement and memory. But handwriting requires more <\/em>of the brain\u2019s motor programs than typing. \u201cWhen you\u2019re writing the word \u2018the,\u2019 the actual movements of the hand relate to the structures of the word to some extent,\u201d says Sivashankar, who was not involved in the new study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, participants in a 2021 study by Sivashankar memorized a list of action verbs<\/a> more accurately if they performed the corresponding action than if they performed an unrelated action or none at all. \u201cDrawing information and enacting information is helpful because you have to think about information and you have to produce something that\u2019s meaningful,\u201d she says. And by transforming the information, you pave and deepen these interconnections across the brain\u2019s vast neural networks, making it \u201cmuch easier to access that information.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Importance of Handwriting Lessons for Children<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across many contexts, studies have shown<\/a> that kids appear to learn better when they\u2019re asked to produce letters or other visual items using their fingers and hands in a coordinated way\u2014one that can\u2019t be replicated by clicking a mouse or tapping buttons on a screen or keyboard. Vinci-Booher\u2019s research has also found <\/a>that the action of handwriting appears to engage different brain regions at different levels than other standard learning experiences, such as reading or observing. Her work has also shown that handwriting improves letter recognition in preschool children, and the effects of learning through writing \u201clast longer than other learning experiences<\/a> that might engage attention<\/a> at a similar level,\u201d Vinci-Booher says. Additionally, she thinks it\u2019s possible that engaging the motor system is how children learn how to break \u201cmirror invariance<\/a>\u201d (registering mirror images as identical) and begin to decipher things such as the difference between the lowercase b and p.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vinci-Booher says the new study opens up bigger questions about the way we learn, such as how brain region connections change over time and when these connections are most important in learning. She and other experts say, however, that the new findings don\u2019t mean technology is a disadvantage in the classroom. Laptops, smartphones and other such devices can be more efficient for writing essays or conducting research and can offer more equitable access to educational resources. Problems occur when people rely on technology too much<\/em>, Sivashankar says. People are increasingly delegating thought processes to digital devices, an act called \u201ccognitive offloading<\/a>\u201d\u2014using smartphones to remember tasks, taking a photo<\/a> instead of memorizing information or depending on a GPS<\/a> to navigate. \u201cIt\u2019s helpful, but we think the constant offloading means it\u2019s less work for the brain,\u201d Sivashankar says. \u201cIf we\u2019re not actively using these areas, then they are going to deteriorate over time, whether it\u2019s memory or motor skills.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Van der Meer says some officials in Norway<\/a> are inching toward implementing completely digital schools<\/a>. She claims first grade teachers there have told her their incoming students barely know how to hold a pencil now\u2014which suggests they weren\u2019t coloring pictures or assembling puzzles in nursery school. Van der Meer says they\u2019re missing out on opportunities that can help stimulate their growing brains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s a very strong case for engaging children in drawing and handwriting activities, especially in preschool and kindergarten when they\u2019re first learning about letters,\u201d Vinci-Booher says. \u201cThere\u2019s something about engaging the fine motor system and production activities that really impacts learning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christine Harding, Principal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since 1935, Our Lady of Mercy Catholic College has held a legacy of instilling the values of leadership, excellence and service, nurturing confident young women. We empower our girls to make their make on society with confidence and compassion. Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning Engaging the fine motor system to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1544,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","article_category":[],"article_tag":[],"class_list":["post-6131","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/6131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"article_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_category?post=6131"},{"taxonomy":"article_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_tag?post=6131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}