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Evidence-based studies regarding deficits in handwriting performance relative to hand reaching and grasping after a stroke are lacking.To evaluate the extent of damage to handwriting skills compared to arm reach and grasp task among post-stroke patients.Eighteen patients and 19 healthy subjects were recruited to this case-control study. Patients were evaluated 15.2 days (±6.5) after the stroke using a Computerized Penmanship Evaluation Tool, surface Electromyography and Fugl-Meyer assessment. This study compared motor deficits in hand reaching and grasping and in handwriting between stroke patients and healthy subjects. Damage to handwriting performance relative to hand reaching and grasping skills was also evaluated.Significant differences were found between groups in handwriting performance (p 0.05). The performance of the trapezius, biceps, and triceps muscles can predict 63.5% of the variance in the ability to write a short sentence (p 0.023). Pen pressure can predict 74.9% of the hand motor performance from Fugl-Meyer assessment (p 0.05). Handwriting was more damaged than was the pattern of activation of the proximal muscles of the shoulder and arm (p 0.05). FM scores were highly, negatively correlated with the in-air writing time across tasks (r = -0.819, p 0.004).This study confirms the clinical observation that dexterity skills are more damaged than are arm forward reach after a stroke. However, these differences in motor performance were not significant in mildly disabled patients, demonstrating the feasibility of handwriting rehabilitation in these patients. Therefore, we modestly recommend focusing on handwriting rehabilitation of the hemiparetic upper extremity in mildly impaired patients after a stroke.

This cloth-bound, large-format book set is a quest to understand and apply thecontents of a groundbreaking fourth/tenth-century treatise that reformed Arabicpenmanship and established the canon of calligraphy applied to this day.Muhamad ibn Ali ibn Muqla’s treatise The Proportioned Script acts as the esotericcenter of a riddle not unlike the unraveling of a lost book through otherbooks as seen in Umberto Echo’s The Name of the Rose. In this case, The ProportionedScript is but a succinct treatise, for Ibn Muqla’s two explanatorymanuscripts detailing the proportions and methods are lost – and can only beretraced through subsequent studies and drawn reconstruction.Why such a monumental effort to unravel a single small treatise on Arabicpenmanship? As the authors explain, it was and is the canon of proportion inwriting and reveals a great deal about the sociocultural context and the importanceof script related to faith. Hence the title of the book. The Cosmic Scriptis clearly the result of significant research. The two authors met over fourdecades ago, during which Moustafa completed an MA and a PhD on the subject.They collaborated for eight years on unraveling The Proportioned Scriptthrough other sources and reconstructed the canon of letters by a detailed geometricanalysis and Moustafa’s own artistic practice of application.The first volume includes an introduction and seven chapters outliningthe historical and spiritual background of the Arabic script in terms of ancientpre-Islamic influences. The second volume contains an introduction andtwenty-one chapters, of which nineteen cover the specific letter families andoutline sources and specific graphics for each letter’s formulation.“Decoding the “Geometry of Letters,” the introduction to the first volume,describes Ibn Muqla as having invented the theory of proportioned script thattransformed this art form and had a significant impact upon the culture of theAbbasid era and beyond. He derived his system from the scribal dot (squarein form, on an angle) and thus, according to the authors, linked prophecy, writing,and geometry with the sacred dimensions. The elevated rank of the penand writing were underscored by the first revealed Qur’anic verses and thesacred status of the physical Qur’an. The authors argued that geometry bridged ...

In elementary school in the 1910s through the 1940s, Japanese Kakikata, bordering 1931 through 1933, converted educational theory from “writing with a pencil for practical use” to “writing with a brush for artistic purposes.” With the rise of theory, “writing with a brush for artistic purposes” and the academic subject “art course calligraphy” started to become independent in 1941. In this study, these backgrounds have been examined from the point of view of linguistics and Japanese education in the context of brush-using calligraphy. The practical value of brush-using calligraphy was being lost due to the recognition of the“letter as the symbol of language” based on western linguistics. Instead of this, brush-using calligraphy would emphasize the psychological and artistic aspects in the Japanese education system., この論文は冊子体をスキャンしたものであり、論文中の図版の解像度が低くなっております。

Background and aim Children with Developmental Coordination Disorders (DCD) exhibit deficient daily performance concealed in their perception–action mechanism. The aim of this study was to analyze behavior organization of children with DCD, in varied tasks that require generating and monitoring mental representations related to space and time inputs/requirements, for achieving better insight about their perception–action mechanism. Method Participants included 42 children aged 7–10, half of whom were defined with DCD and half were typically developing (TD). The children were matched for age, gender and school. They were evaluated using the Movement–ABC and performed three handwriting tasks on an electronic tablet that is part of a computerized system (ComPET – Computerized Penmanship Evaluation Tool). In addition, their teachers completed the Questionnaire for Assessing Students’ Organizational Abilities-Teachers (QASOA-T) to assess the children’s daily organizational ability. Results Significant group differences (DCD versus controls) were found for all handwriting kinematic measures across the three handwriting tasks and for the children’s organizational abilities. Motor ability predicted a considerable percentage of the variance of the kinematic handwriting measures (30–37%), as well as a high percentage of the variance of their organizational abilities (67%). The coefficient of variance of the pen tilt added an additional 3% to the prediction of their organizational abilities. Conclusions The results of this study exhibited deficient ability among children with DCD in organizing their behavior in varied real-world tasks requiring generation and monitoring representation related to space and time. The significance of the results to understanding the performance mechanism and implication to the clinical field are discussed.

The article discusses the role of pencil drawing in the formation of the creative competence of a future teacher of fine arts, the methods and techniques of using geometric shapes in drawing. The article also shows a step-by-step geometric representation of David's face in depicting the shape of a human head.

This commentary discusses the development of the English-Maltese Assessment of Speed of Handwriting (EMASH), a novel bilingual (English and Maltese) writing speed diagnostic assessment battery. The EMASH is an adaptation of the Detailed Assessment of Speed of Handwriting (DASH), a previously standardized English assessment battery developed by Barnett, Henderson, Scheib & Schulz, 2007 with the aim of identifying handwriting difficulties. Given the lack of evaluation instruments that measure writing speed performance that are standardized on the local population, or are in the mother tongue, this study sets out to realize the translation and adaptation of the DASH for the Maltese population. The DASH is not scientifically appropriate to administer and score on Maltese children since it is standardized on a UK population., peer-reviewed

Màster Oficial en Gestió Cultural, Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d’Economia i Empresa, curs: 2017-2018, Tutor: Montserrat Pareja-Eastaway, Paraula Viva és una associació cultural que té per missió infondre interès per la lectura i l’escriptura entre infants i joves a través de l’experiència i la confluencia entre diverses arts. No es tracta d’obligar a llegir ni de forçar els processos cognitius sinó de canalitzar la creativitat per mitjà de l’escriptura, que és la capa subjacent de totes les històries, pel·lícules, sèries o videojocs. Per assolir aquesta missió, l’entitat té la visió de crear una xarxa d’actors del sector educatiu i del llibre per desenvolupar pràctiques comunes que convergiran en l’activitat participativa de la Biblioteca de Carrer, una jornada dedicada a la literatura i que s’haurà creat a través de la participació de la xarxa d’actors del sector educatiu i del llibre . […]

This design project will map, look at and give answers regarding: The story of handwriting from a pedagogical perspective, within a Swedish context. It is primarily based on a great interest in writing by hand, and the effects and benefits it has on its practitioners. Handwriting today compared to before is getting less space in the digitized society, but is handwriting as a practice still used in Swedish schools? The predicted meaning is that children in school cannot write properly by hand anymore, due to all technologies such as smartphones, tablets and computers. The question is complex and the answer is more than just a simple yes or no, and therefore this investigation in handwriting has been done. The thesis will look back in the history of handwriting and give answers to the question through both theory and practice. Through research it will document differences and similarities between how people born between 1930-1959 and today’s lower elementary school children are looking at and working with handwriting. To be able to make this comparison—a digital survey, field studies, workshops and handwritten letters and notes from persons within the two defined research groups has worked as research methods to make the result as reliable as possible. Until recently, the art of writing more known as “Välskrivning” was a very central competence in Swedish school. It was a graded subject where focus was on how to write properly and practice good handwriting. The fact that “Välskrivning” is no longer a school subject means that the children today do not have the same prerequisites for succeeding with handwriting in the long term. They get other opportunities in the digital world, but one does not have to exclude the other. In my research I have found that despite technological tools and advancements, children still enjoy and value writing by hand, and then it is my task as a change agent to break the norm that handwriting as a practice is disappearing in Swedish schools and give children the tools they need to continue writing new chapters in the story of handwriting. To stimulate learning with joy, work with fine motor skills and strengthen the ability to concentrate amongst children through a handwriting workshop is what the investigation has led to. The answers in this thesis will not change the world, but the handwriting workshop, designed as a pedagogical tool, will hopefully inspire and motivate children to write by hand for a long time to come.

Penmanship is a foundational expertise that can impact children perusing, composing, dialect utilize, and critical thinking. Handwriting, a fundamental skill that strengthens fine motor processes, should continue to be taught throughout the early years of a child’s life. For centuries learning to write joined-up letters has been an integral part of children's education, but that is now being threatened by the computer revolution. Although wordprocessing programs and assistive technology are undeniably boons to children with writing problems, technological advances do not eliminate the need for explicit teaching of handwriting. The decline in the instruction of handwriting and its diminished use by students is not because handwriting has lost its purpose; it is due to a lack of teachers' preparation. This article explains why there has been a steady decline in their ability to write competently and legibly in children.

TITLE Handwriting development from 1st to 5th grade of elementary school Author: Mgr. et Mgr. Olga Kučerová Department: Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education Charles University Supervisor: Doc. PhDr. PaedDr. Anna Kucharská, Ph. D. ABSTRACT This dissertation project describes the development phases of the handwriting skills from 1st to 5th grade. The aim of this project is to describe the procedure of dynamic handwriting acquisition concerning two different alphabetic scripts used in Czech elementary schools. These include the traditional cursive script and alternative script that is Comenia Script. We focus on two different styles of penmanship, which are being taught in Czech elementary schools - cursive writing and manuscript writing. Our research sample includes two groups. The first group comprises writers who employ the cursive handwriting style of penmanship, whereas the second group considers the Comenia Script writer i.e. the manuscript style. The research consists of two parts - the theoretical and practical part. The theory defines the basic concepts related to handwriting skills and handwriting development. A substantial part focuses on both styles of penmanship - traditional cursive writing and Comenia Script. We depict their formal characteristics, circumstances of origin and the...

Objective To describe handwriting and executive control features and their inter-relationships among children with developmental dysgraphia, in comparison to controls. Method Participants included 64 children, aged 10-12 years, 32 with dysgraphia based on the Handwriting Proficiency Screening Questionnaire (HPSQ) and 32 matched controls. Children copied a paragraph onto paper affixed to a digitizer that supplied handwriting process objective measures (Computerized Penmanship Evaluation Tool (ComPET). Their written product was evaluated by the Hebrew Handwriting Evaluation (HHE). Parents completed the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) questionnaire about their child's executive control abilities. Results Significant group differences were found for handwriting performance measures (HHE and ComPET) and executive control domains (BRIEF). Based on one discriminate function, including handwriting performance and executive control measures, 98.4% of the participants were correctly classified into groups. Significant correlations were found in each group between working memory and legibility as well as for other executive domains and handwriting measures. Furthermore, twenty percent of the variability of the mean pressure applied towards the writing surface among children with was explained by their 'emotional control' (BRIEF). Conclusion The results strongly suggest consideration of executive control domains to obtain better insight into handwriting impairment characteristics among children with dysgraphia to improve their identification, evaluation and the intervention process.

A commentary on an unpublished memoir by the calligrapher Margaret Alexander (1902-1997) drawn from the papers of Heather Child at Ditchling Museum of Art+Craft. The text was written following Johnston’s death in 1944. The commentary sets the memoir in context and discusses the additional light it throws on Johnston’s vellum bound notebook and the personal philosophy that guided him and the research that formed his posthumously published book Formal Penmanship (1971).

The aim of the study was to examine the application of a computerized handwriting model for characterizing complex figure-drawing performance. We posit that spatial, temporal, and pressure measures that reflect figure-drawing behavior will differ significantly under two mental workload conditions, and that both drawing and handwriting process measures will predict the quality of what is drawn and/or written. Thirty participants copied the Rey–Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (ROCFT). They then reproduced it from memory and finally copied a paragraph on a digitizer that is part of the Computerized Penmanship Evaluation Tool (ComPET) system. Results indicated that certain computerized measures of the ROCFT copying significantly correlated with those of the paragraph-copying behavior (r = .38–.75). Significant differences were found between the spatial and temporal computerized measures of performance in the ROCFT copying and drawing-from-memory tasks. Stepwise regressions indicated that mean pressure predicted 12 % of the variance of the ROCFT and paragraph-copying quality scores and 6 % of the ROCFT drawing-from-memory score. Furthermore, 52 % of the variance of the ROCFT drawing-from-memory score was predicted by the mean velocity. The benefits and significance of obtaining computerized measures of the drawing process for better insight about human performance characteristics are discussed, and applications are suggested.

En este trabajo se presenta el diseño de un programa on-line multilingüe, que tiene como objetivo mejorar las competencias escritoras de los estudiantes universitarios, en la modalidad Open Course Ware. Además se presentará un modelo de adaptación al nivel educativo de Educación Primaria Para justificar el diseño de este curso, en los siguientes apartados, se describirá lo que se entiende por formación on-line y se analizarán las ventajas y desventajas educativas. A continuación, se explicarán las diferentes licencias que se deben utilizar a la hora de diseñar cursos on-line. Seguidamente se describirá el diseño del Open Course Ware, mostrando finalidades y objetivos que persigue, la metodología y la temporalización. En este documento, también se expondrán los diferentes recursos que se han utilizado para el diseño del curso, así como la evaluación del mismo., Universidad de Granada. Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación. Grado de Educación Primaria

Treballs Finals de Grau Antropologia Social i Cultural, Facultat de Geografia i Història, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2016-2017, Tutor: Maria Rosés Tubau, Este trabajo es un acercamiento etnográfico a algunas prácticas cotidianas de literacidad. Gracias a los instrumentos conceptuales y analíticos de los New Literacy Studies, y mediante la descripción y el análisis de los datos obtenidos durante el trabajo de campo, este artículo busca dar cuenta de cómo dos alumnos de una clase de alfabetización (en castellano) participan en situaciones concretas que requieren el uso de la lectoescritura. Asimismo, se pretende analizar las maneras en que ellos se relacionan con el lenguaje escrito, en diferentes ámbitos de la vida diaria. De forma más general, el interés de este trabajo consiste en describir y documentar literacidades cotidianas, que no suelen ser reconocidas por el discurso hegemónico, y explorar su relación con literacidades dominantes

Màster Universitari de Formació del Professorat de Secundària Obligatòria i Batxillerat, Facultat d'Educació, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2016-2017, Tutor: Tutora: Glòria Arbonés Villaverde, Aquest treball proposa una metodologia que permeti fer més significativa la tasca tradicional de la classe magistral duta a terme dins les aules de Filosofia. Una metodologia que insta a l’alumnat a participar en el propi procés d’aprenentatge i que pretén posar de manifest els beneficis de la participació en la condició social de l’ésser humà. Una metodologia basada en la lectoescriptura com a punt fonamental per a l’apropiació dels coneixements i per a l’apropiació del llenguatge per expressar-los.

The production, style and aesthetic status of script was a persistent theme in eighteenth-century English handwriting manuals, known as copybooks, where penmanship was put in the service of burgeoning global commerce and the display of rationality and politeness by both men and women. Eighteenth-century copybooks also presented visual and textual reflections on concepts of art and skill, and consequently are useful documents for understanding changing aesthetic attitudes toward various forms of creative work in the increasingly commercial, imperial and industrial culture of eighteenth-century Britain. Even as categories of liberal and mechanical arts were in the process of separation and codification, these copybooks suggest that the manual practice of writing was strongly connected to other forms of material and visual production, particularly that of drawing. This essay explores the visual and textual claims made by eighteenth-century English copybooks to argue that the practice of writing was understoo...

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how the story short A Man of the River Goes Home (henceforth MRGH) by Agnes Keith in her Land Below the Wind (1939) differs from the rest of the stories in this compilation. As an autobiographical work, Land Below the Wind deals mostly with the author's account of her own life and experience in Sabah during the British colonial era. This may include things she needs to endure, how she feels about the country and her inner thoughts as a white woman who just starting to adapt to a new life in Sabah. This paper is based on this particular short story (MRGH) since it demonstrates how the author changes her style of writing from an autobiographical to a creative mode (i.e transforming fact to fiction). In other words, this is among few instances where Agnes seems to offer a different stroke of her penmanship and that the language and element of fiction used in her narrative is particularized in such a way that it enables her to explore the life of the main character, Abu Nawas while at the same time reflects her own situation being away from home in North America. A Man of the River Goes Home as a short story also testifies Agnes's ability to critically empathise with the native during the era where colonial rules were taking its roots and that her narration of ‘Abanawas versus the White Man's Law’ definitely offers a perspective of a white woman spreading the message of humanity to her western readers amidst her ambivalent position as a wife to a colonial administrator.

The traditional Malay works, as a national legacy to symbolize the epitome of quality penmanship by earlier Malay writers, are perceived to be superficial for embracing myths in them. This study, thus, examined the significance of the myths in these selected works. Data related to myths were cited from The Malay Annals and analysis was performed using an ad-hoc concept in the Relevance theory which is a pragmatic theory. The findings of the study suggested that myths are metaphors serving as a social criticism. Guided by an adequate linguistics theory, this study has suggested that myths in the traditional Malay works carry significant meanings.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the types and meanings of calligraphy presented in modern fashion design. Calligraphy refers to beautiful handwriting or fine penmanship in the West, and handwriting with brushstrokes in the East. The expression patterns being used at present can be divided into three categories. Legible calligraphy is focused on readability more than embellishment. Decorative calligraphy places its importance on decoration at the expense of practicality. The third type, harmonious calligraphy, pursues decorativeness and legibility at the same time. Each of these types of calligraphy is expressed in modern fashion with its own purpose: calligraphy for conveying emotional messages, calligraphy as a special brand image, and calligraphy as an expression of formativeness. The first, calligraphy for conveying emotional messages, is used with characters that are familiar to the public. Calligraphy of this type delivers messages confined emotionally to the conscious world, harmonizing calligraphy with words, or expressing readability filled with purity and delight. Second, calligraphy as a special brand image refers to transmitting a distinctive brand image from other companies through employment of a design motive or pattern by expressing the brand logos or names of designers. Third, calligraphy as a expression of formativeness has the function of shaping expressions as motives or patterns, avoiding meanings of words or phrases. It can be represented by the abbreviation or modification of words, or arranging words in different shapes, harmonizing the words with the clothing construction and atmosphere of the other images.

[spa] En esta tesis doctoral presentamos tres estudios sobre el aprendizaje de las relaciones semántico-léxicas de sinonimia, homonimia y antonimia y su relación con el aprendizaje de la escritura. Los estudios se organizaron en dos fases: en la primera de ellas se llevó a cabo el primer estudio en el que se realizaron entrevistas individuales y se analizaron las justificaciones de 90 niños entre 4 y 7 años de origen inmigrado sobre la situación de sinonimia dialectal o de variación geográfica y la situación de homonimia entre lenguas, ambas en la modalidad oral y escrita del lenguaje. En la segunda fase, se realizó el segundo y el tercer estudio en los que se describieron y analizaron secuencias didácticas dirigidas al aprendizaje de contrarios durante el aprendizaje inicial de la lectura y la escritura en niños entre los 5 y 7 años. En el segundo estudio se analizaron las listas escritas de contrarios de niños de educación infantil y primaria incidiendo en la productividad de este tipo de relación semántico-léxica y en la potencialidad de una propuesta infusionada de enseñanza y aprendizaje de contrarios durante la alfabetización inicial. En el tercer estudio se profundizó en esta productividad describiendo detalladamente las tareas de enseñanza y aprendizaje en dos secuencias didácticas en educación infantil y primaria y analizando los cambios entre las producciones orales y escritas antes y después de la secuencia didáctica. La tesis defiende la hipótesis central de que el aprendizaje de las relaciones semántico-léxicas estudiadas ocurre con particularidades en lo escrito. Así, el objetivo general de la investigación fue examinar el papel del aprendizaje del lenguaje escrito en los momentos iniciales del desarrollo del lenguaje que coinciden con el aumento de vocabulario y la reorganización léxica. En concreto, se indagó por la diferenciación entre lo oral y lo escrito en las producciones y justificaciones realizadas por los niños en los diferentes estudios, y por la productividad de listas escritas de palabras contrarias y su relación con los procesos de enseñanza y aprendizaje en las secuencias didácticas. Nuestro marco teórico responde a las bases comunes de la perspectiva constructivista del aprendizaje y la enseñanza escolares, de la perspectiva evolutiva del lenguaje escrito y a los principios ofrecidos por la lingüista cognitiva en la comprensión de las complejas situaciones lingüísticas estudiadas. De manera específica el marco teórico pretende desarrollar la idea de una perspectiva de continuidad entre el desarrollo del lenguaje y el aprendizaje inicial del lenguaje escrito, como también una mirada integradora entre los diferentes niveles de análisis del lenguaje. Estas dos consideraciones permiten señalar el papel fundamental de lo escrito en el proceso de análisis del lenguaje y su carácter metalingüístico. Los resultados indicaron una influencia relevante de lo escrito en la comprensión de las relaciones semántico-léxicas estudiadas, ya fuera teniendo en cuenta el carácter material de la escritura (etiquetas escritas, listado de palabras) o su carácter evolutivo (es decir, el nivel de conceptualización de lo escrito mostrado por los niños). En el Estudio 1, en la situación de sinonimia se constató que para los niños no era igual la aceptación de un sinónimo dialectal o geográfico cuando éste se presentaba en oral que en escrito. La materialidad de la escritura imponía una mayor complejidad en la resolución de las preguntas dirigidas a los niños. De la misma manera, en la situación de homonimia encontramos que las respuestas a la misma pregunta en la modalidad oral y escrita diferían y que lo escrito forzaba a un reflexión metalingüística. Los Estudios 2 y 3 comprobaron por una parte, la productividad en las tareas de escribir listas de contrarios por parte de los niños de infantil y primaria y, por otra, demostraron una diferenciación en estos listados entre la modalidad oral y escrita y antes y después de la realización de secuencias didácticas dirigidas al aprendizaje de contrarios cuando se aprende a leer y a escribir., [eng] This doctoral thesis presents three studies on the learning of lexical semantic relations of synonymy, homonymy and antonymy and the relationship between this learning and writing. The studies were carried out in two stages. The first stage included the first study, in which 90 children of immigrant origin between the ages of 4 and 7 were individually interviewed in order to study how they justified situations of dialectal synonymy or geographical variation and of homonymy between languages, in both their oral and written forms. The second stage consisted of the second and third studies, which sought to describe and analyse didactic sequences for learning opposites in early literacy learning in children between the ages of 5 and 7. Specifically, the second study analysed written lists of opposites drawn up by children in early childhood education and primary school, placing special emphasis on the productivity of this type of lexical semantic relation and on the potential of a proposal infused with the teaching and learning of opposites in early literacy learning. The third study examined this productivity in depth, offering a detailed description of the teaching and learning tasks involved in two didactic sequences in early childhood education and primary school and analysing the changes in the children’s oral and written output before and after the didactic sequence was performed. The central hypothesis of this thesis is that learning of the studied lexical semantic relations occurs with certain particularities in writing. Thus, the overall objective of the research was to examine the role of learning written language in the initial stages of language development, which are marked by an increase in vocabulary and lexical reorganization. Specifically, the research focused on differentiation between oral and written language in the output and justifications the children offered in the three studies and on the productivity of written lists of opposite words and its relationship with the teaching and learning processes involved in the didactic sequences. The results showed that writing strongly influences comprehension of the studied lexical semantic relations, whether through its material nature (written labels, list of words) or its evolutionary one (i.e. the level of conceptualization of written language shown by children). In Study 1, in situations of synonymy, the acceptance of a dialectical or geographical synonym differed in children, depending on whether it was presented orally or in writing. The materiality of written language imposed greater complexity on the process by which the children resolved the questions they were asked. Likewise, in situations of homonymy, the children’s answers to the same question varied, depending on whether they responded orally or in writing, with the written form calling for metalinguistic reflection. Studies 2 and 3, first, verified the productivity in the tasks of writing lists of opposites in early childhood education and primary school children and, second, revealed a differentiation in these lists between the oral and written forms of the language and before and after the performance of didactic sequences intended to assist in the learning of opposites in children learning to read and write.

This study of the history of scurvy is an amazing piece of scholarship and wit, and a spectacular piece of penmanship. It will appeal not only to those interested in what was a most perplexing mala...

This paper summarizes three mixed-methods studies of Drawing Children into Reading, (curricula for ages 4-8), four instructional projects evolving from the vision of Wendy Anderson Halperin, a children's book illustrator. Researchers conducted the inquiries in rural Michigan from 2008-2013. Participants with two years of instruction exhibited literacy levels characterized by: • Proper pencil grips -- which partly account for better penmanship than control groups’ printing • Written word generation that exceeds control groups’ stories by 50% • Reading abilities measured at the top-proficiency level of state assessments (correlating three times more frequently) • Increased powers of observation which may lead to more expansive composition/narratives.

The opening of the Soviet archives has brought to light thousands of photographs of the Gulag. Yet many of these images, which range from documentation of construction to portraits of prisoners and their overseers, are little known and seldom reproduced. (1) Visually, Soviet repressions and forced labor camps remain largely defined by the mug shots from the Lubianka files, as well as the infamous propaganda films and photographs of the Gulag, primarily of Solovki and the White Sea-Baltic Canal, produced in the late 1920s and early 1930s for both domestic and international audiences. (2) The Lubianka head shots--each prisoner photographed in his or her own clothing both in profile and looking directly at the camera--are endlessly shocking, for here we come face to face with the victims of Stalin's secret police. These photographs show, above all, individuals, laying bare the human toll of Stalin's purges. (3) This is the side of the Gulag hidden in official propaganda, which attempted to present the camps as a humane system and a productive collective enterprise through a multitude of omissions and a variety of photographic and cinematic techniques. In contrast to the tragic singularity of the Lubianka mug shots or the careful assemblage of propaganda films and photo-essays, the archival photographs of the Gulag, now kept at the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) and regional archives and museums, at first appear almost ordinary. They are usually collected into portfolios with succinct captions, adhering to a format that was used to document the accomplishments of Soviet factories and collective farms, a common practice from the 1920s onward. Most focus on the camps and special settlements' production and infrastructure: here, felled trees or close-ups of rock strata, a new road cleared, a group of prisoners in a barebones but clean canteen. These prints are often small, grainy, and poorly preserved. Yet many are also carefully mounted and meticulously hand-colored, and the pages of the albums that contain them frequently decorated with colorful drawings and elegant penmanship. These albums, although they can provide us with information about the camps, are, first and foremost, documents of the extraordinary degree of state control over the Gulag. The magnitude of the system's brutality is entirely missing from this photographic record: the cramped train cars used to transfer prisoners are never shown; the barracks, when pictured, are neat and decently appointed; and the internees themselves are rarely tired or thin and are--always--alive. (4) If the GPU/NKVD did photograph executions, critically ill prisoners, dead bodies, or mass graves, these images have yet to be found (by contrast, official camp records--even if in greatly suppressed numbers--do register illness and mortality in the Gulag). (5) Little is known about how the surviving photographs and photo albums of the Gulag were made. Some of the camps had their own photographic labs, but their day-to-day operations have not been documented, and the names of the photographers, likely prisoners in most cases, were rarely recorded. The albums usually had a commemorative purpose and were often sent to Moscow as evidence of a site's achievements; as such, they are clearly staged and carefully curated, propaganda created by the state for the state. …

ICTの普及に伴い人々が文字を書く機会が減少しており,自身の手書き文字に自信を持たない人が増加している.一方で,ICTの普及を牽引するスマートフォンは,タッチディスプレイを入出力インタフェースとしており,文字の練習の場として機能すると考えられる.また,スポーツなどの身体動作では,その上達においてリズムへの意識が重要であるとされるが,書字も身体動作であるといえる.そこで本研究では,運筆リズムを可視化することで,短時間での上達を支援するスマートフォン向けのペン習字アプリを提案する.入出力環境などのスマートフォンの性質を考慮した手本データ提示手法を提案し,被験者実験によりその有効性を確認する., As the opportunities for people to handwrite have been decreasing along with the popularization of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), people who are not good at handwriting have been increasing. Meanwhile, since the interface of smartphones is a touch display, it may be applicable to practice of handwriting. Moreover, in the field of bodily motion such as sports, there are reports that people can make faster progress in it by becoming conscious of a rhythm; besides handwriting is also bodily motion. In this study, we propose a smartphone application for supporting progress of handwriting in a short time by visualizing stroke rhythm.

Timing ability is essential for common everyday performance. The aim of the study was to compare timing abilities and temporal aspects of handwriting performance and relationships between these two components among children with Developmental Coordination Disorders (DCD) and a control group. Forty two children, 21 diagnosed as DCD and 21 with typical development, aged 7-12, were matched for age, gender and school performed 14 tasks of the interactive metronome (IM) and three functional handwriting tasks on an electronic tablet that was part of a computerized system (ComPET--computerized penmanship evaluation tool). The IM supplies response time, while on-paper and in-air time per written stroke is received from the ComPET. Results indicated significant differences between the groups for both IM and handwriting tasks (ComPET). Linear regression indicated that the mean IM response time explained 37% of variance of the in-air time per stroke during a paragraph-copying task. Furthermore, based on one discriminate function including two measures reflected timing ability, 81% of all participants were correctly classified into groups. Study results strongly recommend consideration of the IM as an evaluation and intervention tool for children with DCD who are faced with timing deficits in their everyday functioning.

Background. Sensory-processing abilities are known to deteriorate in the elderly. As a result, daily activities such as handwriting may be impaired. Yet, knowledge about sensory-processing involvement in handwriting characteristics among older persons is limited. Purpose To examine how age influences sensory-processing abilities and the impact on handwriting as a daily performance. Method. The study participants were 118 healthy, independently functioning adults divided into four age groups: 31–45, 46–60, 61–75 and 76+ years. All participants completed the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile (AASP). Handwriting process was documented using the Computerized Handwriting Penmanship Evaluation Tool (ComPET). Findings. Age significantly affects sensory processing and handwriting pressure as well as temporal and spatial measures. Both handwriting time and spatial organization of the written product were predicted by sensory seeking. When examining age contribution to the prediction of handwriting by sensory processing, sensory seeking showed a tendency for predicting handwriting pressure (p = .06), while sensory sensitivity significantly predicted handwriting velocity. Implications. Age appears to influence sensory-processing abilities and affect daily performance tasks, such as handwriting, for which sensitivity and seeking for sensations are essential. Awareness of clinicians to sensory-processing deficits among older adults and examining their impact on broader daily activities are essential to improve daily performance and quality of life.

Segmentation of manually written record photos into content material traces and words is a crucial undertaking for optical character acknowledgment. However, for the reason that elements of written by hand record are abnormal and various depending at the character, so far it is considered as a challenging issue. A good way to deal with the hassle, we formulate the word segmentation problem as a binary quadratic undertaking problem that considers pair-wise relationships among the crevices and in addition the probabilities of individual holes. No matter the fact that sever a parameters are covered in this detailing, we gauge all parameters taking into account the based Naive Bayes classifier so that the proposed technique features admirably paying little admire to composing styles and composed dialects without patron characterized parameters. Test effects on ICDAR 2009/2013 penmanship division data-set exhibit that proposed method accomplishes the high-quality in magnificence execution on Latin-primarily based and Indian languages.

Writing is a daily used process which has become a major and unavoidable curriculum item. In this brief, we have identified pupils difficulties as they try to master the writing process. We then have put the process itself into question, regarding its numerous dimensions : expression of emotions, knowledge activity, mirror of early experience. Through our experimentation, based on C. Barré-de-Miniac works, we have pointed out several elements to be taken into account in classroom practice : pupils show a real interest for writing, writing situations outside school prove to be varied, bridges can be imagined between school writing and private writing. Yet, there still is many an obstacle to mastering this activity (uneasy penmanship, spelling constraints, perception of writing as a mere learning activity, ill identification of writing aims). Our central topic was to try to understand to what extent taking into account pupils representations could lead to organise learning situations better suited to individual difficulties, and thus help pupils to reach institutional goals in respect of writing. Through ritualized writing situations and the establishment of a writing project based on tales of the beginnings, pupils have thought and put their representations into question, if not widened them.; L’écriture est un objet quotidiennement présent, mais est devenue également un objet scolaire incontournable. Après avoir identifié des difficultés rencontrées par les élèves quant à l’entrée dans l’activité d’écriture, a été interrogée, au sein de ce mémoire, l’écriture dans ces multiples composantes : expression des affects, activité de connaissance et reflet des expériences premières. Les résultats de l’expérimentation menée se basant sur les aspects de l’écriture théorisés par C. Barré-de-Miniac ont mis en avant plusieurs éléments à prendre en considération dans une pratique de classe : les élèves montrent un intérêt certain pour l’écriture, les situations scripturales extrascolaires s’avèrent être diversifiées, des ponts peuvent être envisagés entre écriture privée et écriture scolaire. Cependant, les freins à l’entrée dans cette activité sont encore nombreux (gêne calligraphique, contraintes orthographiques, perception de l’écriture seulement comme activité d’apprentissage, manque d’identification du but d’écriture). La question centrale de ce mémoire a donc été de comprendre en quoi la prise en compte des représentations des élèves pouvait permettre de proposer des situations d’apprentissage plus adaptées aux difficultés de chacun et ainsi permettre aux élèves d’atteindre les objectifs institutionnels en matière de production d’écrit. Par des situations d’écriture ritualisées et la mise en place d’un projet autour de l’écriture d’un conte des origines, les élèves ont, sinon élargi, du moins questionné et pensé leurs représentations initiales.

En esta tesis doctoral presentamos tres estudios sobre el aprendizaje de las relaciones semántico-léxicas de sinonimia, homonimia y antonimia y su relación con el aprendizaje de la escritura. Los estudios se organizaron en dos fases: en la primera de ellas se llevó a cabo el primer estudio en el que se realizaron entrevistas individuales y se analizaron las justificaciones de 90 niños entre 4 y 7 años de origen inmigrado sobre la situación de sinonimia dialectal o de variación geográfica y la situación de homonimia entre lenguas, ambas en la modalidad oral y escrita del lenguaje. En la segunda fase, se realizó el segundo y el tercer estudio en los que se describieron y analizaron secuencias didácticas dirigidas al aprendizaje de contrarios durante el aprendizaje inicial de la lectura y la escritura en niños entre los 5 y 7 años. En el segundo estudio se analizaron las listas escritas de contrarios de niños de educación infantil y primaria incidiendo en la productividad de este tipo de relación semántico-léxica y en la potencialidad de una propuesta infusionada de enseñanza y aprendizaje de contrarios durante la alfabetización inicial. En el tercer estudio se profundizó en esta productividad describiendo detalladamente las tareas de enseñanza y aprendizaje en dos secuencias didácticas en educación infantil y primaria y analizando los cambios entre las producciones orales y escritas antes y después de la secuencia didáctica. La tesis defiende la hipótesis central de que el aprendizaje de las relaciones semántico-léxicas estudiadas ocurre con particularidades en lo escrito. Así, el objetivo general de la investigación fue examinar el papel del aprendizaje del lenguaje escrito en los momentos iniciales del desarrollo del lenguaje que coinciden con el aumento de vocabulario y la reorganización léxica. En concreto, se indagó por la diferenciación entre lo oral y lo escrito en las producciones y justificaciones realizadas por los niños en los diferentes estudios, y por la productividad de listas escritas de palabras contrarias y su relación con los procesos de enseñanza y aprendizaje en las secuencias didácticas. Nuestro marco teórico responde a las bases comunes de la perspectiva constructivista del aprendizaje y la enseñanza escolares, de la perspectiva evolutiva del lenguaje escrito y a los principios ofrecidos por la lingüista cognitiva en la comprensión de las complejas situaciones lingüísticas estudiadas. De manera específica el marco teórico pretende desarrollar la idea de una perspectiva de continuidad entre el desarrollo del lenguaje y el aprendizaje inicial del lenguaje escrito, como también una mirada integradora entre los diferentes niveles de análisis del lenguaje. Estas dos consideraciones permiten señalar el papel fundamental de lo escrito en el proceso de análisis del lenguaje y su carácter metalingüístico. Los resultados indicaron una influencia relevante de lo escrito en la comprensión de las relaciones semántico-léxicas estudiadas, ya fuera teniendo en cuenta el carácter material de la escritura (etiquetas escritas, listado de palabras) o su carácter evolutivo (es decir, el nivel de conceptualización de lo escrito mostrado por los niños). En el Estudio 1, en la situación de sinonimia se constató que para los niños no era igual la aceptación de un sinónimo dialectal o geográfico cuando éste se presentaba en oral que en escrito. La materialidad de la escritura imponía una mayor complejidad en la resolución de las preguntas dirigidas a los niños. De la misma manera, en la situación de homonimia encontramos que las respuestas a la misma pregunta en la modalidad oral y escrita diferían y que lo escrito forzaba a un reflexión metalingüística. Los Estudios 2 y 3 comprobaron por una parte, la productividad en las tareas de escribir listas de contrarios por parte de los niños de infantil y primaria y, por otra, demostraron una diferenciación en estos listados entre la modalidad oral y escrita y antes y después de la realización de secuencias didácticas dirigidas al aprendizaje de contrarios cuando se aprende a leer y a escribir., This doctoral thesis presents three studies on the learning of lexical semantic relations of synonymy, homonymy and antonymy and the relationship between this learning and writing. The studies were carried out in two stages. The first stage included the first study, in which 90 children of immigrant origin between the ages of 4 and 7 were individually interviewed in order to study how they justified situations of dialectal synonymy or geographical variation and of homonymy between languages, in both their oral and written forms. The second stage consisted of the second and third studies, which sought to describe and analyse didactic sequences for learning opposites in early literacy learning in children between the ages of 5 and 7. Specifically, the second study analysed written lists of opposites drawn up by children in early childhood education and primary school, placing special emphasis on the productivity of this type of lexical semantic relation and on the potential of a proposal infused with the teaching and learning of opposites in early literacy learning. The third study examined this productivity in depth, offering a detailed description of the teaching and learning tasks involved in two didactic sequences in early childhood education and primary school and analysing the changes in the children’s oral and written output before and after the didactic sequence was performed. The central hypothesis of this thesis is that learning of the studied lexical semantic relations occurs with certain particularities in writing. Thus, the overall objective of the research was to examine the role of learning written language in the initial stages of language development, which are marked by an increase in vocabulary and lexical reorganization. Specifically, the research focused on differentiation between oral and written language in the output and justifications the children offered in the three studies and on the productivity of written lists of opposite words and its relationship with the teaching and learning processes involved in the didactic sequences. The results showed that writing strongly influences comprehension of the studied lexical semantic relations, whether through its material nature (written labels, list of words) or its evolutionary one (i.e. the level of conceptualization of written language shown by children). In Study 1, in situations of synonymy, the acceptance of a dialectical or geographical synonym differed in children, depending on whether it was presented orally or in writing. The materiality of written language imposed greater complexity on the process by which the children resolved the questions they were asked. Likewise, in situations of homonymy, the children’s answers to the same question varied, depending on whether they responded orally or in writing, with the written form calling for metalinguistic reflection. Studies 2 and 3, first, verified the productivity in the tasks of writing lists of opposites in early childhood education and primary school children and, second, revealed a differentiation in these lists between the oral and written forms of the language and before and after the performance of didactic sequences intended to assist in the learning of opposites in children learning to read and write.

La presente investigación tuvo como objetivo principal conocer los usos que se les da a las herramientas tecnológicas en los procesos de lectoescritura de niños de 5 años del jardín Karol Wojtyla para lograr un enfoque creativo de la educación. Asimismo, se buscó describir el uso que se les da a las tecnologías para lograr los objetivos de aprendizaje en la lectoescritura e identificar procesos creativos en los niños. En relación a la metodología, se hizo el estudio cualitativo del caso de los niños de 5 años del jardín Karol Wojtyla. En este se llevaron a cabo sesiones de observación de los niños y entrevistas a profundidad con los padres de familia. El trabajo de campo comprobó que las herramientas tecnológicas se utilizan en todas las actividades de aprendizaje e introducción de conceptos que se realizan en clase. Las actividades de lectoescritura que utilizan la pizarra y el software son las de silabeo y de identificación y entonación de palabras. Sin embargo, el uso que se le da a las herramientas es de carácter colectivo y la interacción/participación directa de los niños se da en una actividad posterior.

This case study examines the three extant manuscript magazines produced by the Wellpark Free Church Young Men’s Literary Society, one of many similar types of clubs and societies in Glasgow throughout the nineteenth century formed for the purpose of ‘mutual improvement’. The society’s magazines provide useful tools to book historians and historians of reading. They gave members a chance to practise and develop their style, penmanship, and skills in writing essays and poetry, and an opportunity to display their artwork, offering a platform for their work to be critically assessed by their peers. Members’ contributions—along with the peer criticisms that immediately follow—offer a wealth of information on various aspects of late-Victorian life more generally. Importantly, they are also a genre that has not been previously studied.

El uso correcto de los signos de puntuación promueve el ordenamiento de las ideas, facilita la comprensión del texto, permite lograr un cierto estilo de escritura, y es una competencia práctica que puede adquirirse a través de los dispositivos móviles. En este trabajo nos propusimos diseñar y validar un modelo de m-learning sobre signos de puntuación, dirigido a estudiantes universitarios. Para ello, se desarrollaron y evaluaron dos intervenciones de carácter preexperimental en estudiantes de comunicación de la Universidad de Lima. Cada intervención tomó la estructura de un taller virtual de escritura a través de smartphones. El uso correcto de los signos de puntuación promueve el ordenamiento de las ideas, facilita la comprensión del texto, permite lograr un cierto estilo de escritura, y es una competencia práctica que puede adquirirse a través de los dispositivos móviles. En este trabajo nos propusimos diseñar y validar un modelo de m-learning sobre signos de puntuación, dirigido a estudiantes universitarios. Para ello, se desarrollaron y evaluaron dos intervenciones de carácter preexperimental en estudiantes de comunicación de la Universidad de Lima. Cada intervención tomó la estructura de un taller virtual de escritura a través de smartphones. Reseña de investigación

Introduction For people who struggle with writing, composing text can pose many challenges which become a lifelong endeavor to accommodate and improve. Agatha Christie, the famed English mystery novelist and playwright of the 1940s to 1970s, became aware of her difficulties with writing as a child (Christie, 1977). "Although [Agatha] could read ... [writing] was not so pleasant" (p. 15). She found the initial steps of the writing process difficult as she tried to express her ideas on the printed page. It was a challenge to spell and compose text. She expressed that her prose was without originality. The resulting sense of discouragement made the task even more challenging. "I, myself, was always recognized ... as the 'slow one' in the family.... Writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me. My letters were without originality. I was ... an extraordinarily bad speller and have remained so until this day" (p. 42). Agatha Christie's description illustrates that writing is a task, which requires proficient use of a number of concurrent literacy skills, which can pose a real challenge for children to compose text. This author's research project represented in this paper documents three 4th-grade students use of a mnemonic strategy to help them plan and manage encoding of story texts. For struggling writers such as Agatha Christie, they often have not developed a means to manage writing tasks (Baker, Chard, Ketterlin-Geller, Apichatabutra, & Doabler, 2009). Choosing a story topic, preplanning the story's structure (i.e., beginning, middle, and end; Donovan & Smolkin, 2006), spelling words to compose phrases and paragraphs (Saddler, Behforooz, & Asaro, 2008), managing limited working memory resources in the process (Berninger, 1999), and then reviewing multiple drafts for a publishable copy is often overwhelming for these children (Shanahan, 2006). For some struggling writers, reading too can be a challenge rendering the task of editing drafts to be difficult as well (Fletcher, Lyon, Fuchs, & Barnes, 2007). The resulting written product tends to be shorter than that of typically-achieving peers, lacking in detail, with poor penmanship, spelling, and syntax, as well as missing a plot or progressive theme (Hoopet, Swartz, Wakely, de Kruif, & Montgomery, 2002). The characteristics of struggling writers and students with a classified learning disability in writing are often very similar (Fuchs, Mock, Morgan, & Young, 2003). The question is how a teacher, school, and district choose to define one from the other. The fact that children's skills can be sporadic in development also complicates the issue (Gerber, 2005). Traditionally, schools have employed the wait-to-fail model. Children have the opportunity to learn how to master core skills such as writing during kindergarten to third grade. If a student persists in having difficulty, their completion of standardized IQ and academic achievement tests will render a difference (commonly referred to as a discrepancy) in the overall scores of the two tests. This wait-to-fail model has received much criticism resulting in a lingering debate of how to differentiate learning disability from a child who struggles in a core skill such as writing. For this reason, there are school districts across the US that are creating new terms such as "students needing assistive programming (SNAPS)" be more inclusive of the two groups. About 4-6% of school children the US school population has an identified disability (Vital Health Statistics, 2008). If struggling writers become part of the student group with the learning disability label, this collective group could be a much larger portion of the US school population (Lyon, Fletcher, Shaywitz, Shaywitz, Torgensen, Wood, Schulte, & Olson, 2001). The National Assessment of Educational Progress (2007) found that 40% of fourth-grade students could not write at a basic level; the percentages were higher for students from diverse backgrounds. …

In 1726, Edmund Curll published an unauthorised but faithful volume of Pope's correspondence to Henry Cromwell in one of his Miscellanea . In response, Pope was forced to issue his own 'authorised' version of the letters; less textually faithful than Curll's 'pirated' version. The evidence to illuminate these sleights of hand lies in the bundle of letters now kept in MS Rawlinson Letters 90 in the Bodleian. Among them there is a small (and unrecorded) self-portrait of Pope under which there is a note that reads 'This figure is the delineation of Mr. Pope's Penmanship - E. Curll.' From the handwriting sample that this provides, I reread the manuscript and demonstrate that all the letters in the volume were marked up by Curll himself in preparation for their publication in 1726 and subsequently. This episode provides us with an unusual example of Pope favouring the preservation of his public image over the accuracy and presentation of his work in print.

I have often commented about Sherlock Holmes's peculiar fund of knowledge as an encyclopedic acquaintance of sensational and criminal literature; a restricted command of chemistry confined to an exhaustive familiarity with identification of various types of blood, poisons, tobacco, and soil; and a detailed knowledge of the British legal code. However, I was aghast at his spotty knowledge of classic and modern literature; for instance, he did not recognize the name of Thomas Carlyle. But he would occasionally quote long passages from the Shakespearean sonnets. I was musing about this while enjoying a pipeful, when Mrs. Hudson entered with an envelope for Holmes. Holmes picked up the envelope, sniffed at it, and pronounced, “This is from a woman of impeccable elegance, and she is writing from the seaside. Her penmanship is hurried, and, I would guess, conveys some degree of anxiety. I am intrigued about what she has to say.” Holmes opened the letter and read it quickly, and passed it to me. I read it silently: “Dear Mr. Holmes, Your name was given to me by Admiral Welch, who says he is an old friend of yours. My brother John and I have suffered a double tragedy. One is his illness, which, I am afraid, you cannot help us with. The second is a robbery, which deprives us of our main income. Please, Mr. Holmes, see it in your heart to assist the local police in their investigations. Thus far, they have no further information. Imploringly, Elizabeth Carstairs.” I turned to Holmes. “Not much information here, Holmes?” “No, but it is not to be ignored. Admiral Welch did me a great favor at one time and I would be less than a scapegrace if I could not return his favor. Watson, I am not sure of the location of …

This study investigates whether a writer’s gender can be determined from an inspection of simulated signatures written in the Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad. It is generally believed that the penmanship of female writers is superior to male writers. There is also reason to expect that superiority in writing skill might contribute to success in simulating the signatures of other writers. Simulated signatures produced by a large population of male (414) and female (312) Arabic writers were graded, and the results were statistically analyzed. Women were found to have a marginal advantage simulating all elements of the signatures, but there was no statistically significant difference between the genders on any of the elements examined.

Main characteristics of the calligraphic manuscript entitled Schonschriften (beautiful writings) discovered in the Historical Library, University of Gottingen (Germany) are analyzed here. A method based on the principles of material description is developed here to find out details of its formal structure, technical and aesthetical calligraphic mastery and historical circumstances of production and use. This example is part of a large tradition of handwriting and penmanship existing during the 16-17th centuries and displays the convenient integration between academic research and calligraphic practice to achieve improvements in the specialized training on paleography skills of staff responsible for special collections.

This article examines the enduring importance of handwriting in the early republic of Colombia. Colonial practice informed writing instruction but Colombians re‐established it in national terms from the 1820s onward. Teaching writing became a critical tool of state formation: an ideal republic of virtuous functionaries depended on uniform handwriting. “Colombian penmanship” measured teacher effectiveness and student performance. Annual public school examinations enforced new political authority and social continuity. Writing samples expressed gender values, imagining boys as faithful citizens and hard workers, girls as graceful wives and dutiful daughters. Yet Colombian schools expected both boys and girls to perfect their penmanship to best express the virtues of good marriage, true friendship and lasting loyalty. Research in the Archivo General de la Nacion (Bogota, Colombia) Fondo de Ministerio de la Instruccion Publica forms the basis of this study.

There is a long history of issues related to graphic design in libraries. Any design nerd with an MLS loves to talk about the forgotten art of “library hand,” which was the practice of penmanship d...

The objective of this study was to analyze the process and product of handwriting among children with Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1) in comparison to those of Typically Developing (TD) children. Children with NF1 are at risk for some cognitive deficits, a wide range of deficits in perceptual skills and, motor and visual-motor integration skills which may interfere with handwriting competency, which is an essential ingredient for success at school. Participants were 30 NF1 children and 30 age and gender matched TD children, between the ages 8 and 16.08. The handwriting performance of children with NF1 was evaluated with the Beery–Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration (VMI), for copying text and free style writing tasks, using: (1) Computerized Penmanship Evaluation Tool (ComPET) to assess mechanical aspects of the writing process. (2) The Hebrew Handwriting Evaluation (HHE) to examine product legibility. (3) The Six-Trait Writing Model to judge the quality of the written product. Significant differences between the NF1 children and the control group were found in the process and product measures. Significant correlations were found between the VMI, the ComPET, the HHE and the Six-Trait Writing Model variables for both groups. We suggest a possible relationship between executive dysfunction and poor performance in handwriting.

To examine the impact of prolonged graphomotor tasks on tripod-pinch strength and on handwriting process and product measures of children with dysgraphia and typical peers.Participants were 51 children in third to fifth grades, divided into two groups: 23 children with dysgraphia and 28 typical peers, as determined by the Handwriting Proficiency Screening Questionnaire. The procedure included two sessions, with a 15-min break between sessions. In each session, the participants performed two tasks: the visual-motor control subtest of Bruininks-Oseretsky and a handwriting copying task, both performed on an electronic tablet as part of the Computerised Penmanship Evaluation Tool. Tripod pinch strength was evaluated before and after each session.Significantly lower tripod-pinch strength was found among children with dysgrphia in comparison to typically developed peers. This deterioration in tripod-pinch strength was associated with a significant deterioration in handwriting process and product measures along the protracted task.Pinch force that is required for mastering the handwriting tool needs to be considered in the evaluation process of children with dysgraphia. Combining the pinch factor with an evaluation of handwriting's process and product may supply a better insight about the child's deficits and assist in focusing treatment objectives.

PURPOSE. The highest proportion of traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) occurs among adolescents. This study examines the effectiveness of a therapeutic protocol for rehabilitation of adolescents with TBI. This protocol is based on Toglia's (1998, 2005) Dynamic Interactional Model and Expanded Awareness Model (Toglia & Kirk, 2000). METHOD. Explanatory case studies presenting 2 adolescents (ages 16–17) with mild to moderate TBI are combined with qualitative and quantitative data assessing self-care, mobility, and graphomotor abilities as well as deficit awareness in these domains. Outcome measures include the FIM™, the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure, the Computerized Penmanship Object Evaluation Tool, and the Awareness of Mobility Deficits Questionnaire. Graphic data analysis compared outcome measures before, during, and after intervention. RESULTS. The Dynamic Interactional Model was effective in improving self-care, mobility, and graphomotor abilities and identified awareness of deficits in these domains. CONCLUSION. These research findings contribute to our theoretical knowledge in rehabilitation and promote adopting this approach for rehabilitation of adolescents with TBI.