Writing speed
How efficiently the child writes.
Oppimi with the University of Parma, 2019How a line of handwriting becomes a clear picture.
A stylus records not only what a child writes, but how: every movement, pause and lift of the pen. Try it yourself below, then see what Oppimi does with it.
Write here, and watch it being measured.
Write "le le le" or your name with a stylus, a finger or the mouse. Every movement is read about 200 times a second, the way the Oppimi engine reads a child's writing.
Write here
slowfastpausepen in the air
Speed
Pressure
Pen
Your writing stays on this page. Nothing is saved or sent.
cm/s
Writing speedwhile the pen is down%
Time in the airplanning the next stroke%
Pressurewith a pressure stylusPausespen stopped ≥ 0.1 s
Pen liftspen left the screen
Readings/sfrom your device
This demo shows the kind of signals Oppimi records. The engine in the app uses more measures, quality checks and its own scoring, which are not shown here.
From pen to report, in four steps.
Each check is a short expedition through Gotopia. Every writing activity in it goes through the same four steps, in a few seconds.
Capture
The stylus reports position, pressure and time about 200 times a second:
x, y, pressure, time.Check
Each recording is checked for quality: enough readings, a steady sampling rate, a usable pressure signal. Weak recordings are flagged, not scored.
Measure
The engine computes measures of the finished page (size, alignment) and of the movement (speed, pauses, lifts, time in the air, smoothness, pressure).
Describe
Measures become plain-language levels in the report, compared with the child's own earlier checks. No diagnosis, no ranking.
What we measure, and why.
Studies with digital pens show that children who find writing hard differ most in how they write: more pauses, more pen lifts, more time with the pen in the air. Each Oppimi measure is chosen from peer-reviewed research.
Time in the air
Planning between strokes, while the pen is lifted.
Rosenblum, Parush & Weiss, 2003Pauses and pen lifts
Interruptions in the writing movement.
Paz-Villagrán, Danna & Velay, 2014Smoothness
How automatic each stroke is: fluid, or broken into small corrections.
Danna, Paz-Villagrán & Velay, 2013Pressure
How the pen is held and pressed on the screen.
Asselborn et al., 2018Letter size and alignment
How regular and readable the writing is on the line.
Oppimi with the University of Parma, 2019Sequence memory
Remembering a sequence of lights shown on screen.
Corsi block-tapping paradigmAnd more in the app
The engine uses further measures, quality checks and its own scoring. They are part of Oppimi's technology and are not published here.
The data behind it.
The engine was built and tested on recordings from Oppimi's pilots with schools, clinics, a hospital and a university in 2018 and 2019.
1,000+children in our 2018–19 pilots
8,351writing and attention tasks recorded with the pen
~46,000shapes copied by hand and analysed
388children in our study with the University of Parma
How the pen moves is closely linked to how long writing takes.
388 primary-school children copied a sentence twice, as fast and as neatly as they could. Oppimi's handwriting measures showed acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach's α = .78), and writing time was closely linked to how the pen moved.
Correlation with writing time; all p < .001. Oppimi with the University of Parma, presented at the AIRIPA national congress, 2019. Pilot figures are counted in aggregate; no child can be identified.
Pen-lift time.69
Stops.59
Strokes.51
Pen-down ratio−.51
What the science does not claim.
Not a diagnosis
Oppimi describes how a child writes. Only a qualified professional can diagnose a learning difficulty.
Not a ranking
Children are compared with their own earlier checks, never ranked against classmates.
Not a black box
Every measure in the report has a plain-language explanation and a research basis.
Not shared without consent
Personal details are encrypted on the device. Data is never sold.