David Wilson

I've just viewed the project's MFL section. The statistics do provide an interesting quantitative snapshot of what is happening in MFL/ICT. I'm not surprised to see how projectors have made a greater impact than interactive whiteboards. Buying the latter for every classroom would be prohibitively expensive. Of course, the statistics neglect the most interesting aspect of ICT usage in subject teaching. There's a saying in educational ICT that it's not so much the program that matters, it's the way that it's used. I would have liked to have found out more about how Word, for example, served to support the teaching of MFL. The effective integration of ICT into on- and off-computer classroom practice is key. David Wilson http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com

A year ago my secondary school applied successfully for the Basic Skills Quality Mark. To support our bid, I created an online portal dedicated to literacy and numeracy in each of the core and foundation subjects of the National Curriculum: http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com/nc/basic/ Hope this resource helps. Please let me know if it does (or doesn't), as I value feedback. Although I have now posted half a dozen messages on Education Forum, I have yet to receive a single reply. I may be in Newcastle upon Tyne, but I'm beginning to wonder whether I'm also in Coventry... David Wilson http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,...1243477,00.html Alle Mädchen, die diese englische Sekundarschule besuchen, sind jetzt verpflichtet, lange Hosen zu tragen. David Wilson http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com/

I agree that the Internet Wayback machine does a great job of archiving the Web. One of its advantages is that it's possible to see "snapshots" of a website - including my own, I may add - over time, at different stages of its development. The UK archiving initiative sounds typically well-intentioned and worthy, a work of centralised leadership by committee, supported and developed by a string of august institutions with lofty opinions about what is and isn't worth preserving for posterity. Personally, I prefer the Wayback machine model: preserve everything in sight, the good, the bad and the ugly, and let ordinary people make up their own minds and exercise their own judgement. We have no idea what will be important to future generations when they look back into the past. It's wrong to second-guess them. David Wilson http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com/

My teaching and research interests lie in the delivery of the curriculum in general, and modern foreign languages (MFL) in particular, to those with special educational needs (SEN). I have a teacher education website with case studies of MFL learners with cognitive, communication, behaviour, sensory and other impairments at http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com/case/ and a bibliography of modern foreign languages and special educational needs at http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com/mfl/biblio.doc with over 1100 online and print references. Although many projects dedicated to "MFL for all" exist worldwide, there is little or no coordination among them, which is why I maintain this bibliography to raise awareness of what work is currently in progress in the MFL/SEN field and to address what is a common issue in educational innovation, the "reinvention of wheels". If anybody thinks that MFL/SEN is an esoteric area, then consider the saying in the SEN world that whatever is successful with learners in difficulty is likely to prove equally effective with learners in general. Hope this helps. David Wilson http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com/

A reduced curriculum focusing on core subjects - I assume English, Maths and Science are the subjects in question - may be a short-term solution for a minority of students in difficulty, but there are perils in this approach if it is introduced as a blanket response. Considering that English is often the problem subject for these students, followed by Maths, they are being limited to sitting public exams in what are their weakest subjects. Some flexibility needs to be built into any curtailed academic curriculum to ensure that students are also able to demonstrate their strengths, whether in humanities, foreign languages, technology, creative arts etc, all of which may be taken at "entry" level by those with cognitive difficulties. Secondary education should, on the whole, be about a "broad and balanced" curriculum, the entitlement often found in statements of special educational needs. There is the opportunity to specialise post-16. Let's be careful not to lump together everybody with "learning difficulties" when deciding what is an appropriate curricular provision for such students. This is a multidimensional category of special educational needs. Some students with (specific) learning difficulties are extraordinarily bright and can be taught the full complement of academic subjects so long as a multisensory approach is sensitively implemented. As for general learning difficulties, my local MLD school offers the full National Curriculum. The problem isn't necessarily the academic subject itself, it's the way that it's taught that makes the difference. Is student disaffection a consequence of the former or the latter? David Wilson http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com/

I have a research interest in the teaching of school subjects to pupils with speciel educational needs. One of the results of my research is a series of bibliographies of SEN in subject teaching, which I have posted on my website at http://www.specialeducationalneeds/inclusi...ula/biblio.html. On of the observations I have made while compiling these bibliographies is the relative paucity of literature online an in print about the teaching of individual school subjects to those with ASD. Where people do write about, say, ASD and Art, they tend to focus on the "therapeutic" aspects rather than the didactic issues. There is no ASD equivalent of David Fulton's excellent "Dyslexia in ..." series, where there is a volume for each subject in the school curriculum. As witness Anne Jakin's message, ASD has spawned a fine "generalist" tradition of methodological literature for educators, but lamentably little focused writing of immediate application to the teaching of particular school subjects, so I share ChristineS's frustration when she complains about the lack of information about the implications of Asperger Syndrome for the English classroom and about appropriate strategies to be deployed when supporting such learners. I can only suggest that she works to the strengths of her students and reports her success on a website, in an article or a conference presentation so all classroom practitioners can benefit.