I did good, I kept it on track, yeah (Alex G)

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Penmanship is rapidly becoming a dying art, or even a thing.

We've started our Term  3 into 4 study break for two weeks, but the memory of students doing their recent practice exams on devices, lingers.

It seems rare now to see students using pen and paper in their normal day to day lessons, so it's inevitable that NZQA would introduce digital exams at some point.

Students still have the choice but not one of my students elected to forgo using their laptop in the two weeks of exams.

In the senior school, they are used to typing now, more than writing, so they reported positive benefits from the experience. They wrote a lot more and I would say the quality of their answers will be better, plus the marking of their 'papers' will be a lot easier - no deciphering of rubbish hand-writing any more.

Given all that, I'm not about to be a crusader for using pen and paper, but as I'm of an age, I still love writing with a fountain pen, real ink, on real paper. And I can still bemoan the lost art of penmanship, and encourage educators to persist against the odds.