Digital Pen Technology’s Suitability to Support Handwriting Learning

While digital technology is entering today’s classrooms and learning environments, handwriting is still primarily taught using regular pencil and paper. In our research we explore the potential of digital writing tools to augment the handwriting process while preserving its cognitive benefits. In particular, we are interested in (1) how the characteristics of digital writing tools influence children’s handwriting experience and quality, compared to regular pencil and paper and (2) what kind of feedback may be beneficial to digitally augment the handwriting process and how this can be integrated into handwriting technology. In this paper we describe early findings of a study we conducted at a primary school to investigate how existing digital pens (iPad and stylus, WACOM tablet, and Livescribe pen) affect children’s handwriting quality and the handwriting experience. As part of this we discuss our methodology on evaluating handwriting quality, an inherently subjective activity. Furthermore, we outline the potential design space that digital writing tools open up when it comes to augmenting the handwriting process to facilitate learning.