gourdgal virginia's List: Brainy Stuff

• good handwriting skill is one of the crucial foundations of success in school  and in life
• basic brain processes involved in handwriting

• • Does typing skills increase as handwriting skills decrease?

  • It's been my observation in recent years that penmanship has declined, even among students who are gifted thinkers. Can there be a relationship between the expression of gifted thinking and being able to write or typing?
• Associate professor Anne Mangen at the University of Stavanger’s Reading Centre  asks if something is lost in switching from book to computer screen, and from  pen to keyboard.
• our brain receives feedback
• When writing by hand,
• from our motor actions, together with the sensation of touching a pencil and  paper. These kinds of feedback is significantly different from those  we receive when touching and typing on a keyboard.
• different parts of the brain are activated when we read letters we have learned  by handwriting, from those activated when we recognise letters we have learned  through typing on a keyboard.
• brain’s Brocas area is discernibly more activated when we are read a verb which  is linked to a physical activity, compared with being read an abstract verb or a  verb not associated with any action.
• One group was taught to write by hand, while the other was using a keyboard.
• Those who had learned the letters by handwriting came out best in all tests.
• In her opinion, a one-sided focus on context may lead to neglect of the  individual, physiological, sensorimotor and phenomenological connections.

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• Indiana University research suggests teaching them handwriting skills is still  important in helping them learn to read.
• research is pointing to that it might not be fine, you might be setting up a  child’s brain to interpret letters and words in a very different way
• The scans for the group that was simply shown letters didn’t look that  different. But in the scans for the group that learned to write the letters,  James saw a huge spike in activity in their brains’ reading network.
• more parts of the brain light up when you do handwriting versus when you find  with any other activity,”
• With something like typing, that’s a simpler motor skill, so I’d expect less of  the brain to light up.”

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• While educators find handwriting increasingly irrelevant, there is evidence that  the act of writing by hand provides significant developmental   

  benefits .
• • OK, some proof...let's get back to cursive writing and the 'neatness matters' train of thought that not only encourages brain activity, but inspires pride in expressing thoughts.
• Putting actual pen to paper can have significant  benefits for brain development,
• • Handwriting spurs parts of the brain typing does not...interesting that it can actually be a predictor of reading ability at age 5 (gifted thinking?).
• students between second and sixth grade wrote essays that were both longer and  more thorough when using pen and paper rather than a computer.
• contradiction with a Vanderbilt University study done in spring of this year  that showed that students who typed produced better quality writing.
• in addition to other benefits, knowing cursive also helps their students learn  second languages like French and Spanish.
• • INTERESTING!! That handwriting in kindergarten helps children learn a second language faster!

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• "Will a simple handwritten note look like hieroglyphics to the next generation?"
• Forty out of 50 states in the United States have adopted the Common Core  curriculum, which phases out cursive writing in the classroom
• the time formerly devoted to teaching cursive is spent on learning to type and  other digital skills
• "With technology being what students need to learn in order to participate in a  global world and economy, I'm not sure schools can forfeit the time to teach  cursive, unfortunately,"
• But for students these days, it's often faster and neater to take notes on a  laptop or similar device, making the speed of cursive far less important.

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• Why Do We Need To Define Giftedness?
• Why Do We Need To Define Giftedness?
• to select children for a program and the kinds of educational services that are  provided to those children.
• what kinds of educational services are provided to them.
• what services schools should provide.
• The concept of giftedness is not limited to high intellectual ability.
• should be based on the way in which the school system operationally defines  giftedness
• Definitions of giftedness are influenced by social, political, economic, and  cultural factors.
• Giftedness is found among all groups, including females, minorities, handicapped  persons, persons with limited English-speaking proficiency, and migrants.

• Marland Report (1972), contains a definition of giftedness  that has been and continues to be the one most widely adopted or adapted by  state and local education agencies. The Report states:

   

  Gifted and talented children are those identified by  professionally qualified persons who, by virtue of outstanding abilities, are  capable of high performance. These are children who require differential  educational programs and/or services beyond those provided by the regular school  program in order to realize their contribution to self and the society.
• of promoting elitism (Feldman 1979)
• Approximately half of the experts agreed that social adeptness and psychomotor  ability should be included (Martinson 1975).
• "student, identified by various measures, who demonstrates actual or potential  high performance capability in the fields of mathematics, science, foreign  languages, or computer learning."
• By placing an emphasis on math, science, foreign languages, and computer  learning, this latest federal definition highlights the fact that the ways in  which schools operationally define giftedness are often based on the needs of  society.
• "what is clever and creative for a child in the barrio or on the reservation,  where different value systems are in operation, will not be the same as for the  child who grows up in the suburbs" (1974).
• Who Are The Highly Gifted?
• extremely high on individually administered IQ tests
• Child prodigies
• extremely highly developed talents in unusual areas
• Profoundly intellectually gifted children above 170 IQ
• The child of 160 IQ is as different from the child of 130 IQ as that child is  from the child of average ability.
• programs for most gifted children,
• are designed for the moderately gifted.
• nearly impossible for highly gifted children to conform their thinking to the  ways in which others think. Some do not ‘group’ well
• . Some have difficulty developing relations with others.  Some argue continuously because that is the way they learn. Some are intensely  sensitive. Some have major discrepancies between their intellectual maturity and  motor coordination and so appear ‘immature.’ (Silverman)
• • two of my students reflect this thought, word for word!

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• • Skeptic 101 starts the critical thinking process. It show how to apply scientific processes to any topic.
• • Skeptic Thinking initially sounds negative, but with further thought and investigation actually opens a brain up to consider many points of view.
• • The Science Education is no indicator of skepticism is an eye-opener.

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• • This site is handy for some reality checks, as is Pants on Fire.com
• • When did it begin that we needed fact checking websites to believe or disbelieve our leaders? Men of honor, where did they go?