What Penwick actually does
It watches how a letter is written rather than how it ends up looking. Where the pen goes down, which direction it travels, whether it lifted. A letter can look right on the page and still be built the wrong way round, and on paper you would never know.
✅ Watches how a letter is written
❎ Judges only how it ends up looking
Every lower-case letter and join in it was recorded by a practising primary teacher writing at teaching pace, not traced from a font. When a child copies a letter in Penwick, they are copying her hand.
The two people behind it
A sister and a brother: the teacher whose hand is in the app, and the parent who built it.
Jayne Davies
Primary teacher · BSc, PGCE · qualified 2001 · Marcus's sister
Every lower-case letter, join and word in Penwick is her hand, recorded stroke by stroke. She teaches Reception through Key Stage 2 and has spent more than twenty years watching children learn to write.
Marcus Davies
Built the app · MyAutobot Ltd · Jayne's brother
Could not help his seven year old with joined-up handwriting, could not find an app that judged how a letter was made rather than how it looked, and built this one instead.