One of my favorite quotes is, “What the hand does, the mind remembers." It’s a reminder that handwriting is such a powerful tool. I’m fascinated by it, because, for many years, I relied on typing to take notes. It feels like that Edward Hays story of a guy with a magic Folger’s coffee can. The guy was given the Folder’s coffee can and stuffed all of lives great experiences into it. He focused on capturing great life experiences and then putting them in the can for safekeeping.
It was only years later that he discovers his Folger’s coffee can has a hole in it. It wasn’t designed to house all his precious lifetime experiences. When he looked behind him, he saw a long pile of discarded experiences. He was dismayed. So, someone counseled him to hold up the can and peer through it, and savor the experience in the moment.
That’s a lot what using keyboards and technology to take notes, make sense of the world feels like. Nothing of what I typed stuck, but what I wrote, did.
Research on the Power of Handwriting for Learning
Consider this research:
When writing by hand, brain connectivity patterns were far more elaborate than when typewriting on a keyboard, as shown by widespread theta/alpha connectivity coherence patterns between network hubs and nodes in parietal and central brain regions. Existing literature indicates that connectivity patterns in these brain areas and at such frequencies are crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information and, therefore, are beneficial for learning.
Our findings suggest that the spatiotemporal pattern from visual and proprioceptive information obtained through the precisely controlled hand movements when using a pen, contribute extensively to the brain’s connectivity patterns that promote learning.
Wow. This next point is pretty profound:
We urge that children, from an early age, must be exposed to handwriting activities in school to establish the neuronal connectivity patterns that provide the brain with optimal conditions for learning. Although it is vital to maintain handwriting practice at school, it is also important to keep up with continuously developing technological advances. Therefore, both teachers and students should be aware of which practice has the best learning effect in what context, for example when taking lecture notes or when writing an essay.
The Power of the Pen
…brain research shows that it is not just any motor activity that facilitates learning, but that accurately coordinating the complex hand movements while carefully shaping each letter when using a pen, is crucial (Pei et al., 2021). Apparently, the pen causes different underlying neurological processes that provide the brain with optimal conditions for learning and remembering…. Handwriting requires fine motor control over the fingers, and it forces students to pay attention to what they are doing. Typing, on the other hand, requires mechanical and repetitive movements that trade awareness for speed. Our results reveal that whenever handwriting movements are included as a learning strategy, more of the brain gets stimulated, resulting in the formation of more complex neural network connectivity. It appears that the movements related to typewriting do not activate these connectivity networks the same way that handwriting does.