Hi, I’m Marcia Edel, the founder of KiwiWrite Math. Welcome to my blog!
My daughter has a learning disability called dysgraphia along with some fine motor skill limitations. This means she struggled with handwriting throughout her education. She’s now in college, so I’ve spent years thinking about all the handwriting issues she encountered and how to help. Writing math was particularly difficult for her, and became a special interest of mine.
When handwriting isn’t automatic or easy for children, written work presents unusual barriers. They may not be able to read their own writing due to legibility. This can cause mistakes in their math problems which is frustrating. Writing can take so much effort, physically or mentally, it exhausts them or even just hurts. So much of their focus and
brainpower is depleted by written letter and number formation and alignment. They don’t have enough brainpower left to learn the math and complete their work.
For years I’ve wanted to create a software app specifically designed to allow students to write their math assignments on a computer. However, It just wasn’t feasible for me for a long time.
Luckily, my situation changed soon after the start of the pandemic. After lots of research and learning, I launched this project. The initial beta version was released in June 2022.
Future blogs will include:
Stories about starting the company, building this product, and being a female entrepreneur without prior experience creating web applications
Tips and tricks for students with disabilities to try when handwriting math
Ideas for math teachers looking to increase accessibility of math materials for these students
Information about different disabilities that affect handwriting, such as dysgraphia, dyslexia, autism, and fine motor skill issues
Posts about new and interesting ways to use KiwiWrite Math. To learn more about the app now, check out our homepage at kiwiwrite.com
I’d like to share what I’ve learned about these topics over the years, as well as contributions from guest writers. I’ll also share some of the creative ways my daughter developed to compensate for her dysgraphia.
Thanks for reading my KiwiWrite Math first post! Stay tuned for my next blog, in which I’ll share some stories and ideas related to handwriting high school level math.