Feb 13, 2012 | DM News Blog
Hooray… Finally we have a government trying to fix the decline in our computing skills base. When I was a child Windows did not exist and anybody with an interest in computers got the Sinclair Spectrum or the BBC Micro. The key thing was that these...
Feb 10, 2012 | DM News Blog
While you’re reading this it may feel as if your eyes are moving in a linear way across the page, smooth as silk. In fact this is not the case. What is actually happening is that your eyes are making little jumps from one group of words to the next. These miniscule...
Feb 8, 2012 | DM News Blog
The government have been testing a check on the progress 6-year-olds have made with their phonic understanding. We are in total support of the principle behind this test. The sooner that a teacher/parent team sees that a child is heading down a sight-reading path...
Feb 7, 2012 | DM News Blog
You will know that one of our main seven identified causes of reading difficulty is a problem within the cerebellum. We are not alone! Here is an article about dyspraxia and its links to dyslexia: Dyslexia could be caused by defects in the part of the brain that...
Feb 6, 2012 | DM News Blog
There are a few simple games that will guide your child down the path to becoming a confident and happy reader when he or she is first learning to read. We regularly come across very bright children who are really struggling with their reading, but only because they...
Jan 12, 2012 | DM News Blog
A French team has published their report on the cause of dyslexia. Here is a typical report on what they have said. You will see others in the press and around the web:...
Jan 5, 2012 | DM News Blog
Here is a nicely made video about reading difficulty with a number of famous people talking about their own experiences: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m1fCz3ohMw&feature=share As you listen to it you will see lots of examples of the 7 causes of difficulty that...
Sep 16, 2011 | DM News Blog
Here is an article about the new tests being introduced: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14930193 We are generally in favour of this direction because it is essential that children develop a decoding and blending ability. However, the difficulty still comes when...
Sep 16, 2011 | DM News Blog
Here are the latest results for 11-year-old literacy in the UK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14371183
Jun 28, 2011 | DM News Blog
As part of the Evening Standard’s recently established ‘Get London Reading’ scheme, an interesting article was published last week about the struggles of a boy named David. At his current age of nine, David has a reading age of just four. Since he...
Apr 5, 2011 | DM News Blog
Here is an interesting article on the nature of autism: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12937009 What they are saying fits with our experience with autistic children going through the course. Most of them do surprisingly well because they have a strong visual...
Jan 18, 2011 | DM News Blog
We make contact with a lot of our customers through Google. So when Google offered to improve how we did that, it was an easy decision to say yes. There was a series of prizes attached to the training for “good students”. And we won one of the five...
Jan 13, 2010 | DM News Blog
I just found this blog post by a personal tutor, describing a revelation about the destructive effect of stress on the learning process. It sounds like it was a painful lesson to learn, but I’m sure his students are better off for...
Dec 2, 2009 | DM News Blog
I found this website earlier; it’s run by a woman called Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord, who teaches kids to make books. There are lots of free activities on the site, as well as book recommendations, ideas and tips. A really inspiring...
Dec 2, 2009 | DM News Blog
I’ve just been reading about an initiative being run in rural Niger which uses mobile phones as a tool to aid in increasing adult literacy. The scheme is called IMAC (Information sur les Marchés Agricoles par Cellulaire), and it allows users to access information...
Dec 2, 2009 | DM News Blog
I happened upon an article earlier this week about a literacy-promotion scheme which I’d never heard of before. It’s called Reach Out and Read, and its mission is to make literacy promotion a standard part of paediatric primary care, by training doctors and nurses to...
Nov 26, 2009 | DM News Blog
Iansyst, a Cambridge-based company specialising in assistive technologies for conditions such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, and dyscalculia, is currently running the 2009 iansyst Dyslexia-Friendly Best Practice Award, a competition aimed at recognising and celebrating best...
Oct 15, 2009 | DM News Blog
Here is an interesting article about the wiring of the brain for literacy. A lot of what we are doing during Easyread is to link the visual cortex to the auditory cortex. That is quite an unnatural pairing and so does require effort to set up. Most of the children...
Jul 10, 2009 | DM News Blog
Sir Jim Rose has reported his findings on dyslexia. What he says makes great sense. He makes 19 recommendations, but his two main points are first that dyslexia is related to reading difficulty and should not be expanded into other areas. Here is his definition:...
Mar 10, 2009 | DM News Blog
Here is an article about the vast sums of money being spent on adult literacy: Government pledges £1billion It makes Easyread look pretty good value! The results achieved by adult literacy programmes are usually pitiful. They are almost always based on a weekly or...
