I really like your take on the state of play over the last 10 years:

Our school rules and practices are probably 5 to 10 years out of date in the context of the internet age.

Though in one sense (ironically) things were easier then as very few schools had any form of filtering when they first accessed the internet… and I don’t remember Western Civilization crumbling as a result!

The simple fact is that we need to start teaching pupils as soon as they start formal education… not least because most of them have already started to use the internet at home. As you correctly point out, “we need to guide them”. We cannot pretend that it doesn’t exist!

I particularly appreciate this one. Through the fear of litigation schools administrators have gone into defensive mode over online social-networking, yet it is social-networking that offers so much potential for students to build learning networks, collaborate with like-minded others and take control of their own learning. Very few administrators appreciate this potential and thus enforce less than inspiring learning methods. Ironically our same students are highly connected at home and potentially engaging in risky behaviour because they have not learnt at school that online behaviour has offline consequences.

Have printed your post off for regular inspiration – thank you.

I, too, have blogged about Doidge’s work here: http://hileryjane.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/compensation-or-intervention/

As someone who has worked in ASN for many years, I agree that we need to consider this research. However, your use of the word ‘primitive’ to describe ‘much of learning support’ is somewhat patronising and ill-informed.

This is what I wrote in my blog post on Doidge’s work:

I do take issue with Doidge’s contention that compensatory interventions are to be deplored. He used the example of students with poor memory tape recording lectures. As I tapped away on my netbook knowing all would disappear into the ether otherwise, he declared that because such strategies do not address the aetiology of the problem they were to be discouraged.
I was distressed by the a clip of little children with poor motor control whose good arms were encased in plaster all day so as to re-train damaged limbs. Doidge stressed the necessity of incremental concentrated practice to enable new neurons to take over lost functions.

There can be no argument that such interventions must have a profound and positive effect upon the nervous system and that eventually re-generation is possible.

However, Doidge seems to ignore the impact on a child’s need to belong, to feel as much like his or her peers as possible. I still shudder at the memory of the patch I had to wear to correct a lazy eye and the ostracism I endured. Had I been of a piractical disposition I might have got away with it.

While Doidge’s talk focused principally on neurological difficulties that result in physical symptoms, he also appeared to say that teachers of children with learning difficulties were working inappropriately unless they acted to ‘re-programme’ the brain.

This is a concern many of us have for much of our working life. But realistically – and for the sake of learners’ sense of self worth – is is also our job to provide alternative strategies and resources if children are failing to learn at the pace of their peers or their own intellectual capacity. The balance between spending time improving memory skills and teaching a child to use an electronic word bank, for example, is one that we need to examine regularly.
This may mean that the learner will always have difficulty in some areas – but then, don’t we all?

I wish to add that our job – the job of all teachers – is to support learners; not to make them fit into an antiquated and creaking 19th century system. We cannot ‘cure’ dyslexia, for example, but we can embrace the strengths that learners with dyslexia bring to learning and even try to emulate them rather than place them in ghettos of failure.
‘Re-programming’ our smokestack schooling may be a more creative and worthwhile use of our energies if we wish to enable all learners to develop exponentially.

Enjoy that well earned break and lets hope that you return from it a little less shy and withdrawn.

See you soon Fiona