The practice of students endlessly copying letters and sentences from a blackboard is a thing of the past. With the coming of new technologies like computers and smartphone, writing by hand has become something of nostalgic (怀旧的)skill. However, while today's educators are using more and more technology in their teaching, many believe basic handwriting skills are still necessary for students to be successful—both in school and in life.

    Virginia Berninger, professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, says it's important to continue teaching handwriting and help children acquire the skill of writing by hand.

Berninger and her colleagues conducted a study that looked at the ability of students to complete various writing tasks—both on a computer and by hand. The study, published in 2009, found that when writing with a pen and paper, participants wrote longer essays and more complete sentences and had a faster word production rate.

    In a more recent study, Berninger looked at what role spelling plays in a student's writing skills and found that how well children spell is tied to know well they can write. “Spelling makes some of the thinking parts of the brain active which helps us access our vocabulary, word meaning and concepts. It is allowing our written language to connect with ideas.” Berninger said.

    Spelling helps students translate ideas into words in their mind first and then to transcribe(转换) “those words in the mind written symbols on paper or keyboard and screen,” the study said. Seeing the words in the “mind's eye” helps children not only to turn their ideas into words, says Berninger, but also to spot(发现) spelling mistakes when they write the words down and to correct then over time.

     “In our computer age, some people believe that we don't have to teach spelling because we have spell checks,” she said. “But until a child has a functional spelling ability of about a fifth grade level, they won't have the knowledge to choose the correct spelling among the options given by the computer.”

    The Pacific island nation of Nauru used to be a beautiful place. Now it is an ecological disaster area. Nauru's heartbreaking story could have one good consequence — other countries might learn from its mistakes.

    For thousands of years, Polynesian people lived in the remote island of Nauru, far from western civilization. The first European to arrive was John Fearn in 1798. He was the British captain of the Hunter, a whaling ship. He called the island Pleasant Island.

    However, because it was very remote, Nauru had little communication with Europeans at first. The whaling ships and other traders began to visit, bringing guns and alcohol. These elements destroyed the social balance of the twelve family groups on the island. A ten-year civil war started, which reduced the population from 1,400 to 900.

    Nauru's real troubles began in 1899 when a British mining company discovered phosphate (磷酸盐)on the island. In fact, it found that the island of Nauru was nearly all phosphate, which was a very important fertilizer for farming. The company began mining the phosphate.

    A phosphate mine is not a hole in the ground; it is a strip mine(露天矿). When a company strip-mines, it removes the top layer of soil. Then it takes away the material it wants. Strip mining totally destroys the land. Gradually, the lovely island of Nauru started to look like the moon.

    In 1968, Nauru became one of the richest countries in the world. Every year the government received millions and millions of dollars for its phosphate.

    Unfortunately, the leaders invested the money unwisely and lost millions of dollars. In addition, they used millions more dollars for personal expenses. Soon people realized that they had a terrible problem — their phosphate was running out. Ninety percent of their island was destroyed and they had nothing. By 2000, Nauru was financially ruined. Experts say that it would take approximately $433,600,000 and more than 20 years to repair the island. This will probably never happen.

    According to a recent study published in Journal of Consumer Research, many people believe that healthy food must be more expensive than unhealthy food. In fact, the study's researchers found that a high price tag will even convince consumers that a certain food is healthful.

    According to Rebecca Reczek, coauthor of the study, the purpose of the study was to examine a popular belief. Sometimes the belief can be true: Organic produce and wild caught seafood typically cost more money. But other times, the nutritional value of food ranks all the same.

    In one experiment, Reczek's team gave a group of participants a new food product called "granola bites". Some participants were told the product was very healthy. Other participants were told the bites had little nutritional value. Participants who were told the granola bites were good for them rated the snack as more expensive than the participants who thought the bites were unhealthy.

    In another experiment, participants were given a health food bar labeled as "the healthiest protein bar on the planet". Some participants were told the bar cost just D|S0.99, others were told the bar was D|S4. And here's what happened: The people who were given the "cheaper" bar needed to read a lot more reviews about the product when it was priced at a lower price point in order to trust that it was healthy.

    The idea that we all believe healthy food needs to be more expensive works against us. All food companies need to do is push up the price to convince us.

But Reczek said, "When we shop, we don't have to be led astray. We can compare nutrition labels and we can do research before we go to the grocery store. We can use facts rather than our intuition (直觉)"．

    Mid-afternoon on a particularly busy Tuesday, I took leave of my desk at work and walked into a local Starbucks only to find a space where neither my clients nor my children would ask me to do something.

    Inside, I ran into Kate, a co-worker of mine. The topic of parenthood came up. I complained about how packed my schedule was. From the minute I woke up to the minute I fell asleep, I was constantly in demand and always had someone knocking at the door. But a bit of sadness seemed to come over Kate's face.

    "Well, my daughter's in San Francisco and she doesn't seem to need me at all these days," Kate said. It was in that moment that I realized although I might often feel in high demand, there will come a day when I will actually miss that same stress I then complained about.

    And as our conversation continued, it turned to our children's younger years, with Kate smiling proudly, thinking of the little boy and girl she raised who are now a man and a woman. But I noticed her smile was marked with regret. She explained that she often wondered about what she could have done differently when her children were in their earlier years.

    This got me thinking. Is regret an unfortunate footnote (注脚) to parenthood? With that in mind, I asked six older parents one question: What is your biggest regret from your early days as a parent?

    It turned out that all of them thought they could have done it better. But, each of them also has a strong, healthy relationship with their kids. Whatever regrets their parents might have had about their upbringing, one thing is clear —— it didn't affect them in a meaningful way.

    The bottom line is, we all feel like we could be doing this parenting thing better. And quite clearly, years later, we're still going to look back and wish we tried things differently. But the past can't be changed, and neither should it.

    I used to be crazy about the hunting season. The excitement of waiting for a prey(猎物)and the pride of showing off the kill fascinated me. However, everything changed after that cold morning.

    Early on that day of the late fall, I set off alone for the woods, packing a gun, a bottle of hot coffee and three thick sandwiches. After finding the fresh deer's tracks in the snow, I settled down behind a little bush.

I sat there for about an hour. It was then that I saw him. A deer, a big beautiful deer! There was no cover nearer to him than 30 yards. Surely I couldn't miss! I waited for him to realize I was there. I waited for him to be shocked and run away. But he fooled me completely. He came towards me! He was curious, I suppose, or maybe lie was stupid—how else can you explain it? Well, that deer walked right up to where I was sitting. Then he stopped and looked at me!

    What happened next is hard to believe, but it's true. And it all seemed quite natural. Just as when a friendly young deer comes near you, I reached up and scratched his head. And he liked to be scratched. In fact, he practically asked for more. Then, I fed him my sandwich! Yes, I know what a deer eats, but that deer ate my sandwich. Well, he finally went his way, down the hill and up the deer trail. Shoot him? Not me. You wouldn't have either, not after that. I just watched him go.

    When I was about half way back, I heard two shots, followed by a dull slam(撞击)a few seconds later. Those two shots usually mean a kill. I had forgotten there were other hunters that day.

    Those hunters would never know they could have scratched his head.

When Lamont Thomas, a retired restaurant employee, became an empty-nester, it was the end of a parenting story. A couple years ago, the divorced father of two became a hero when he took on a kid named Michael Perez in 2001.

"He was a good young man and I just hated to see him in the welfare system," Thomas said.

Thomas eventually adopted Perez, who now works as a nurse.

Perez was just the beginning. Over the next 15 years, Thomas raised more than 30 kids. He did so all as a single parent and with all of his heart.

"Every child that I have had, it was my goal to make a difference in their lives," he said.

When he retired from raising children to spend time fishing and traveling, that didn't last for long.

"It really was a shocker," Perez said. "I didn't expect for him to restart and to do it all over again. "

Thomas began to foster again when he found out that five brothers and sisters all under the age of 6 were going to be permanently broken up. To guarantee they stayed a family, he adopted all of them too.

"I had to help them. They deserved to be raised together," Thomas said.

After Thomas' story first aired, CBS News received a lot of surprising mail from women who expressed interest in the great man. Some notes weren't obvious, others were braver, "Ask Mr. Thomas if he would like a pen pal," wrote one woman, while another said, "I'll marry Lamont!"

But the kids see no room for romance, nor does Thomas.

"I was about to change my phone number," he said.

So he remains single. He spent Thanksgiving with family and is more grateful than ever.