What's the point of handwriting? | Teacher Network Blog | Guardian Professional Is handwriting a personal piece of art? Photograph: Erhan Dayi / Alamy/Alamy Not so long ago, I found myself shuffling through a couple of old boxes which had lain gathering dust in my parents' house since my teens. In amongst the debris – posters of Debbie Harry and Kenny Dalglish, yellowing copies of "Roy of the Rovers"- I came across an ageing school notebook, from History to be precise. Flicking through, I found myself amazed at how neat and tidy my teenage self was, displayed in the carefully sketched Egyptian huts and hieroglyphics, and how carefully crafted my handwriting appeared to be. Clearly concerned with impressing my teacher, the writing was perfectly shaped, beautifully presented and, I have to say, hugely impressive. While I didn't quite clutch it to my chest, rocking in the foetal position, weeping for days long since lost to me, I saw a little piece of my life at that point. It's dying out though, isn't it? Free teaching resources on the Guardian Teacher Network
Poor memory? Blame Google | Science Research has shown that search engines such as Google have prompted people to adapt their ability to remember things. Photograph: Paul Sakuma/AP First it was a search engine. Then it became almost synonymous with the internet. Research by scientists at Columbia University has found that people are adapting their ability to remember because of the formidable power of search engines such as Google to remember things for them. The research, published in Science magazine, involved a series of experiments. Participants "did not make the effort to remember when they thought they could later look up the trivia statements they had read," the researchers reported. "The results ... suggest 'where' was prioritised in memory, with the advantage going to 'where' when 'what' was forgotten," the researchers said. Betsy Sparrow, a psychologist who was one of the principal researchers, said that when faced with difficult questions, people are "primed to think about computers".
Texts and Twitter 'spell end for long words' Traditional English words such as ‘balderdash’ and ‘cripes’ are dying out thanks to the texting generation, linguists have claimed. Some 73% of people believe texts and website Twitter have dramatically changed the use of English, with long words falling out of use. The trends were revealed in a poll of 2,000 adults for the launch of JP Davidson’s book Planet Word. The book is a tie-in to Stephen Fry’s BBC2 series of the same name, charting the history of language from early grunts to tweets. The author said: “Language is always evolving and great descriptive words are being lost – but others emerge. “It’s natural with people trying to fit as much information into 140 characters that words are getting shortened and are even becoming redundant as a result.” JP Davidson’s top 15 rarely-used words: 1. What's your favourite long or unusual word to use?
Actor Ralph Fiennes blames Twitter for dumbing down the English language By Daily Mail Reporter Updated: 12:46 GMT, 28 October 2011 It has become the A-lister's social media of choice. But not all celebrities are similarly enamoured with Twitter. Actor Ralph Fiennes has blamed social networking websites such as Twitter for dumbing down the English language. The actor, 48, who does not use Twitter, believes words of more than two syllables are a challenge to some young people. The change in modern language inspired him to create his modern-day film interpretation of Coriolanus, said Fiennes, currently playing Prospero in The Tempest at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Dumbed down, Actor and director Ralph Fiennes - condemned social media sites such as Twitter for 'truncating the English language' - seen her with actress Vanessa Redgrave at the BFI London Film Festival screening of new film Coriolanus 'We’re in a world of truncated sentences, soundbites and Twitter,' he said. '[Language] is being eroded — it’s changing.
A Point of View: Why didn't Harry Potter just use Google? 6 January 2012Last updated at 18:20 Books, not the internet, were a key source for Harry and co In a world that is overwhelmed with ways of accessing information, we must decide what to remember and what to forget, says historian Lisa Jardine. In a recent article about the impact of the internet, New Yorker columnist Adam Gopnik gives a particularly engaging example of the hurtling pace at which the speed of access to information is accelerating. The first Harry Potter book - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - was, he observes, published in June 1997. Just one year later, in 1998, the founders of Google registered their internet and software company, and the global online search engine was born. Today, any young reader of JK Rowling's The Philosopher's Stone would be bound to ask, turning the pages with bated-breath expectation as Harry Potter comes close to being discovered in the out-of-bounds section of the library: "Why didn't he just Google it?"
txting_and_standards Facebook use can lower grades by 20 percent, study says - Technology & science - Tech and gadgets - Back to School Does the "F" in Facebook stand for an "F" in school? A new study says that college students who are on Facebook while studying or doing homework wind up getting 20 percent lower grades than students who don't have the social networking site in visual range, or even running in the background on their computers or mobile phones. The study, reported in the Daily Mail of Britain, was done by Netherlands psychologist Paul A. Kirschnera told the Daily Mail that his team studied 219 U.S. university students between ages 19 and 54, and found that Facebook users had a typical grade point average of 3.06, while "non-users" had an average GPA of 3.82. The psychologist said the study wasn't about whether Facebook's good or bad, but goes more to the stereotype that younger people are fluid multi-taskers —sending text message, listening to music, reading a book, all at the same time, for example — without any problems. © 2013 msnbc.com Reprints
Tech Digest Or at least it's making us lazy, opting for shorter words instead of long ones. 73% of us believe that Twitter and text messaging is changing the use of the English language, according to a survey presented in a book by JP Davidson called "Planet Word". Too bad for "balderdash", as you really don't hear that often enough as it is, but language is evolving, and brevity is becoming a virtue. "Language is always evolving and great descriptive words are being lost", said Davidson, but added that others emerge to take their place. Davidson's book is being published as a tie-in with Stephen Fry's new series, also called Planet Word. Here are JP Davidson's top 15 rarely-used words: 1 - Bally 2 - Laggard 3 - Felicitations 4 - Rambunctious 5 - Verily 6 - Salutations 7 - Betwixt 8 - Lauded 9 - Arcane 10 - Raconteur 11 - Cad 12 - Betrothed 13 - Cripes 14 - Malaise 15 - Quash [via Daily Mirror]