• 84% of respondents prefer a handwritten love note
• 6% prefer a singing telegram
• 10% said they would rather receive chocolates

This sold-out summit brought together 150 professionals and research from a variety of practices, including psychology, occupational therapy, education, and neuroscience, to discuss and learn more about handwriting’s role in students’ physical and cognitive development, learning standards and the classroom.

Livescribe has long been a proponent for preservation of handwritten note-taking in the classroom, and the Summit’s consensus about teaching handwriting was similar, with multiple presentations highlighting the benefits of handwriting instruction in the classroom.

“Research shows that children benefit from teaching handwriting, spelling and composing,” explained presenter Dr. Virginia Berninger from the University of Washington. Learning handwriting has both cognitive and motor benefits, and letter formation is a skill that needs to be taught and practiced.

Dr. Karin Harman James of Indiana University explained that her research indicated that in children, handwriting, not keyboarding, leads to adult-like neural processing in the visual system, part of the brain’s central nervous system. She used fMRI scans taken of children as they wrote and typed and said her findings suggests that “handwriting may have a particular role in setting children up for reading acquisition.”

Similarly, Professor Steve Graham from Vanderbilt University found that when handwriting is not taught, reader comprehension may suffer. He also noted having poor handwriting can negatively impact others evaluation of the message.

The findings above represent just a fraction of what Summit attendees learned about the importance of handwriting. You can find these speakers’ presentations on the Summit’s website. Also check out a recent Forrester study commissioned by Livescribe that focused on the importance of note-taking in education, its use in the workplace, and the need to bring spoken and written information to the digital domain.

We’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you think handwriting instruction should be incorporated into classroom curriculum?

During a CES Innovation Power panel session, Ursula Burns, chairman and CEO of Xerox, aptly commented, “We must fundamentally improve our educational system. We need to make science and math a desirable place to be. We need great teachers. We need excited learners. We can’t complain if we don’t have them, if we don’t invest in them.” (Full story on Web Pro News)

In related CES news, One Laptop per Child (OLPC) joined forces with silicon provider Marvell to showcase a new XO 3.0 tablet. The companies are investing in education for children living in poverty across the world with their low-cost, low-power tablet, which is expected to cost around $100 per device to contracted governments. Making high-quality and interactive educational tools will be increasingly important in 2012; and in today’s economy, ensuring innovative technology becomes more affordable will take on an equal or greater weight.

We’ve talked before about the impact of tablets on education, and specifically how Livescribe is a complement to the iPad. We continue to believe that learning should be an engaging process – one where you can create your own digital, searchable notes, and interact with your teachers in a way that makes the textbook jump off the page. That’s why we’re also excited about the recent news from Apple around their iTunes U, iBooks and iBooks Author products.

For its part, Livescribe has also made significant strides in the education market over the past year. At the K-12 level, Livescribe is involved in education reform through the Common Core Challenge, a program led by Council of Teachers and Mathematics members Jon Wray and Bill Barnes.  By using low-cost, smartpen technology, Wray and Barnes aim to create an online resource with interactive instructional guides for each math concept outlined in the Common Core Standards.

Livescribe smartpens are also well-suited to the field of learning disability education. In the fall of 2010, UC Berkeley’s Disabled Students’ Program (DSP) began a pilot program in which they provided a subset of students with a Livescribe smartpen for use in taking class notes. At a time when education budgets continue to face intense scrutiny, Berkeley not only identified cost saving opportunities from the Livescribe pilot program; they were also able to track improved performance in participating students.

If January’s news is any indication of what’s in store, the Year of the Dragon looks promising in the education technology space. What is the one innovation you’d like to see in education tech this year? Let us know in the comments.

Exciting news for Livescribe today with former HP executive Gilles Bouchard joining the company as CEO. Gilles will oversee strategic planning, operations and product management. Company founder Jim Marggraff will remain on the board and serve as an advisor to the company. The official announcement can be found here, but below are a few words from Jim and Gilles as we look back at the journey and what’s next for Livescribe.

As a serial entrepreneur, I love the process of creating something from nothing.  Livescribe is the fifth company I’ve founded or co-founded. During this time, I’ve focused on sparking game-changing ideas that generate significant, positive impact on society.

When we launched Livescribe in January 2007, we were swirling in the final froth of a roiling economy. Our smartpens hit the shelves in one of the worst retail and economic periods in history. In addition, we were an unknown company introducing a totally new category in consumer electronics, with a funky device – a smartpen. And we were in need of growth capital. I remember stepping onto the street in Manhattan, walking to my first meeting for a new round of funding and seeing the words “Lehman Declares Bankruptcy” scroll by overhead.

At a time when consumers were beginning to adopt smartphones and other mobile digital devices with negligible marginal discretionary income, the concept of smartpen and paper didn’t sound revolutionary. The description simply raised eyebrows while invoking frowns.

But then people tried it…and loved it. The concept of capturing written and spoken information and making it readily accessible in a digital format is a simple idea, but one with significant impact for the people who have now tried it. Of the students, educators and professionals using it, roughly 70 percent of our customers say the Livescribe smartpen has “changed their lives”. As our team receives continual praise for the incredible and unique impact that our smartpen has on the lives of students, teachers, writers and journalists for whom note capture, writing, and interviewing are critical to their lives, our inspiration surges. The praise we hear from managers, sales people, lawyers, and doctors about their increased performance, and the adulation we receive from clergy, psychologists, artists and researchers about their improvements in communication, reflection, and expression provides ongoing motivation to improve, innovate and expand.

When I met Gilles, I was impressed with a clear-thinking, driven, seasoned executive who was inspired by our creation and the potential of our business. I know Gilles will carry forward a legacy of impact and innovation, while driving business success in a market about to explode with opportunity around digital writing on all surfaces. Gilles is spectacularly equipped to oversee Livescribe’s expansion as even a broader category leader in digital writing.

Meanwhile, my accumulation of ideas for innovation and businesses that reach beyond Livescribe continue to grow, as does my urge to begin again, kindling a new spark from an idea. I look forward to continuing work with Livescribe’s Board and serving as an advisor to the company, as Livescribe advances and broadens its offerings in the digital writing space. I am energized and humbled by the extraordinary team and community we have created.

-          Jim Marggraff

I’ve spent the past 25 years in the consumer and technology industries as an engineer, manager and senior executive. While I’ve worked at large companies, I have a passion for small companies primed for growth and breakout innovation. Livescribe is a great fit for me personally and professionally and I am excited for this opportunity.

This is an exciting time in consumer electronics with tablet computers, cloud services and apps gaining popularity and mass consumer adoption. With all of these devices and services comes demand for an integrated digital writing solution – an area where Livescribe has a deep understanding and knowledge.

While note-taking applications and styluses are popping up for tablets, they are complimentary – not complete note-taking solutions, especially for those people who prefer to take notes using pen and paper. Livescribe’s unique strength is the ability to capture written and spoken information on paper and make it available through popular services and applications like Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, Google Docs and Google Sites, as well as on a tablet or mobile device. We will continue to build upon these existing partnerships and drive the industry on what’s possible in the digital writing space. If you’re curious what we have in mind, check out this video, which highlights our vision for Livescribe in the coming year.

Livescribe continues to be recognized as an innovative technology. Just a few weeks ago, Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps, wrote about the next five computing form factors beyond tablets. Among which, Livescribe was listed as an example of an embedded device – one of the five form factors which the firm envisions as the “best candidates for what comes next…”

As the leader in digital writing, Livescribe has an extraordinary opportunity to take advantage of our knowledge and consumer demand for a simple, intuitive and integrated solution for digital writing. Our mission has always been to support the capture, access and sharing of written and spoken information. We started with pen and paper and the company will continue to advance the technology to support other devices and surfaces.

I look forward to advancing Livescribe’s technology and providing a simple digital writing solution that makes it easy to capture, access and share written and spoken information anytime, anywhere.

-          Gilles Bouchard

Meet Little AJ. Little AJ goes to meetings, takes notes, acts as a second pair of ears and even has a buddy, a portable PA system, named Little Soul.

Little AJ is ceremony officiant Adrienne Harrell’s Livescribe Echo smartpen that she uses to help her design custom ceremonies for her business, Soulful Ceremonies.

Adrienne has found her smartpen to be extremely useful because its audio recording capability allows to her practice active listening and re-live the experience of meeting clients when she’s reviewing her notes.

“Usually when you’re meeting with someone about a ceremony, it’s a meaningful event in their life, whether it is something happy or something a little bit more complex like a memorial or a funeral,” Adrienne explains. “With my smartpen, I can have a conversation, I can ask questions, and when people are in that moment where you just want to let them talk, I’m able to listen and absorb it, making a note or two of things I really want to remember.”

One thing she really appreciates about using the Livescribe smartpen is she can revisit how ceremony participants spoke about each other.

“If I’m trying to capture a wedding experience for someone, I can revisit how they spoke about each other in a certain way,” she explains. “When I ask, ‘How does this person express their love?’ or ‘What type of feeling do you want your guests to have when they are participating in your special day?’ I don’t just have my notes. I have the actual tone of their expression of how they are feeling, and this informs my approach to ceremony design.”

Adrienne found such success using her smartpen to design ceremonies that now she uses it at her primary job in education at the University of California for tackling day-to-day activities, while in meetings and as an example of a time-management tool to show students.

“I love Little AJ,” Adrienne says. “She helps me keep tabs on the world.”

Thankfully, 2011 was a year of many exciting developments in education – thanks to contributions from the public sector, private sector and non-profits.  A post in Mashable by Michael Stanton outlines a top 11 list of those developments.

From Stanton’s list, we think some of the most significant developments were:

• The Death of the Traditional Textbook – In the rapidly evolving information age, textbooks only tell half the story. There are a host of tablet-based solutions and interactive textbooks popping up in the higher education market. 2012 will likely usher in a new set of complementary technologies to those products. When students are accustomed to learning through the lens of technology, the market will capitalize on the many potential ways to improve their experience – making it more useful and educational.
• New Tools for Early Adopter Instructors – We’ve seen professors using innovative techniques for sharing lessons online to supplement class materials. From our perspective, Livescribe and the Livescribe Connect solution is an enabling technology – one that allows professors to share meaningful and comprehensive materials with their students at the click of a button (or tap of a page).
• Building the First Whole Network of K-12 Users – While the Mashable article credits a specific company with building a robust network of K12 users, we believe the overall trend of opening the lines of communication and enabling teachers to work as a community is critical to successful education reform. We’ve been watching intently as states begin to implement Common Core Standards and work together to reach common goals. We believe that information sharing and this renewed sense of community will be a big part of moving that effort forward.

We’d also humbly suggest another important development for students in 2011:  the maturation of digital note-taking.  Thanks to a proliferation tablets and note-taking apps like SoundNote, Penultimate and Notepad Pro; updates to services like Evernote and OneNote; and the integration of handwriting into these services and devices through Livescribe Connect, students have more ways to bridge the incredibly important analog skill of handwritten note-taking with the portability of digital devices.

Technology is slowly changing the face of education as we know it, but we’re a long way from the silver bullet that will spark a holistic and game-changing shift in the education market. In the meantime, we should focus on arming our educators with the best possible technologies that facilitate collaboration and community – thus enrich the educational experience for today’s students.

Last week, a Fast Company article picks up on that data as a springboard for further advocacy of handwriting.  The writer, Kevin Purdy, raises several compelling reasons why pen and paper are still the best “app” for some fundamental tasks, even while makers of mobile device apps claim a more efficient way to do just about every imaginable human activity.

• Light bulbs!  When a great idea occurs to you, there’s nothing faster than handwriting.  You can jot your thought down, add diagrams, and let your ideas flow.  By contrast, Purdy points out, when you need to fire up a device, open an app, fiddle with fonts, you’re interrupting your natural thought process.  Moreover, as a study by a University of Washington psychologist showed, the physical act of writing your idea down helps commit it to memory, as pen strokes activate more regions of the brain associated with memory and language than typing.

• To do lists! Likewise with to do lists, handwritten ones are better committed to memory – and, as Purdy points out, they are portable, fast to access, and the hassle of rewriting them can actually act as an incentive to get things done, so you don’t need to rewrite the same task day after day.

• Focus! Paper contains no distracting links, search boxes or pop-up messages, so Purdy argues, it allows you to focus more thoughtfully on one task at a time.  Paper also has the benefit that you can flip back and forth quickly, you can spread out several documents in front of you, and you can scan the length of the document in one glance.  And if that’s not enough, another Fast Company writer recently devoted a whole post to the value and bright future of paper.

All this said, we at Livescribe certainly aren’t Luddites – and nor is Purdy.  He notes that once you’ve done your deep, undistracted thinking and your ideas are clear, it’s easy to digitize your handwritten notes with tools like Livescribe and Evernote. We couldn’t agree more.

The fast-paced contest attracted some of the top minds from high school students around the U.S. One hundred ninety-two teams consisting of up to three members per team, downloaded and participated in the first portion of the competition and of those, the top thirteen were chosen to compete in the live crime solving competition in New York. Livescribe smartpens were featured in the live portion of the competition where they were used to interview witnesses in the invented crime the students were solving. Each of the 33 students, making up 13 teams, were provided pencasts of the witness interviews, which they then used as part of their analysis. The students had four hours to look though all the evidence that was provided, and decipher who committed the cyber-crime.

Check out the pencasts that were used:

After the intense competition, the judges evaluated each team’s findings and awarded first, second and third place prices.  As a bonus, each member of the top three teams was given a Livescribe Echo smartpen as part of their award.

“Having Livescribe onboard this year added an additional layer of excitement to the competition,” said Joel Fernandez, Team Leader of the CSAW Cyber Forensics Challenge of NYU-Poly. “The students were thrilled to use the pen as an additional investigative tool during the competition, but what was most exciting for them was learning about all of its capabilities afterwards,” said Fernandez.

It was very rewarding to work with the students as a part of this program.  More information about the CSAW competition can be found here.

“I can draw the lab set ups and draw diagrams to explain ideas. It’s especially valuable for topics that are particularly complex,” Rachel says. “The students can then replay the pencast as a review.”

Rachel also uses pencasts for students who miss class, ensuring that they can see and hear her explanation – and are not relying on other classmates’ to explain the complicated class material. Even students who attend lectures often ask for a “pen lecture” so they can review them later.

“Diagrams are so much more useful than words alone to explain many of the concepts in class,” Rachel continues. “Pencasts give students the best of both.  They

can follow along as I draw anatomical diagrams, or diagram sequences of events that occur inside cells, for example. Pencasts allow me to show the student how to work out problem sets that involve equations or genetic crosses.”

Students have told Rachel that studying challenging subjects like human anatomy or cell biology with the benefit of “pen lectures” adds an enriching dimension to the material, and have urged other instructors to adopt the technology as well.

“I’m in favor of anything that helps student comprehension and enjoyment of science,” Rachel concludes. “Pencasts are a great tool in that regard because they’re so quick and informal.  The students like them and they truly help.”

Even if you’re not a student yourself, you can learn something about human biology from Professor Simons.  Just click on the pencast below to see and hear her explain the process of digestion.

Starting today, we are pleased to announce that we are offering a refer-a-friend program. Through the program, your friends and family will save money when they purchase a smartpen, and you get a kickback too! With your own personal link, you can refer friends to receive 15% off any smartpen, and for every person who purchases a smartpen, you get a $15 cash reward. You’ll simply send a personal message via email or easily share your link on Facebook and Twitter to get your friends started.  It has never been easier to help your friends discover what a great tool the smartpen is and start earning rewards!

We at Livescribe have always been excited about sharing with our friends and family, and ‘tis the season! Sign up today