P3 (Age 8) Typed vs Handwritten Reports?

[Taz1212]

DD had to do an end of year school project on frogs- table of contents, various bits of factual information, body diagram, quiz, bibliography etc. She told me that she was allowed to either handwrite it or do it on Word.

She did it by hand and whilst she got very good marks/comments, the teacher did say that next time she should type up her report.

I'm not trying to be funny, but eh? Surely at the grand old age of 8 she should be practising her handwriting and spelling (I.e. not using spell check). Isn't it a bit early to be wantin typed reports or am I being as I am frequently known to be old fashioned???

Equally, they need to learn how to use the technology available to them in this day and age. I don't think there can be many situations where a handwritten report would ever be needed, but to be able to use the technology children use these days, without even really having to think about it, must be marvellous.

do they have access to the school computers to do their homework? surely they can't expect every family to have a computer and printer

My ds is 9 and he has had 3 projects over the past year. Without a doubt the ones that were typed were done by parents and hand written ones by the kids. Teacher does not appear to mind either way. He is very good with technology but we don't own a printer. It would be unfair to ask parents to provide them. We have a laptop and an iPad and would hand it in on a pen drive instead!

Euphemia- I'm not sure, it might have been poor phrasing. The comments were, "blah, blah, blah, good work, good detail but next time you should type it." I'm possibly reading too much into the "but"

DS is 11 and one of his last writing assignments needed to be typed. I was more than happy for him to type it because I think 11 is a good age to start to transition. I think he's got the foundations of writing but DD is still (certainly by her handwriting!) working on it.

I hadn't thought about parents not having printers but yes, that's a good point. The school does have computers but not for homework like this assignment. Our printer frequently runs out of ink and it takes DH ages to replace it- I head to the library to print things when that happens!

DSs school they actually say "Please make sure at least 2 chapters of your project are hand written, and at least 2 diagrams are handdrawn"... (And that is still the case in years 5 and 6).
I think they prefer the handwriting as it stops just copying and pasting vast reams of info off the internet and printing it out as their own work.