Brain Gym: Was I being flippant, Part II

Last year in my keynote at ULearn07 in Auckland I criticised Brain Gym based on some small-scale research findings of a colleague, and a fair amount of reading into a technique which seemed to have no research base to back it up. All of this was started with an initial awareness of its problems from Digital Katie and David Colarusso. They were trying to find out how many public bucks had been spent on the 'boosting brain  power' programme in schools which seemed to have no reasoning behind its miracle claims.

It's a post from Quality Improvement Officer Gordon McKinlay which highlights this latest research which, pretty categorically, debunks the Brain Gym myth. One worth sharing with staff, no matter how much they protect the apparent wonder effects of the programme. See Jeremy Paxman and colleagues take it to bits in this Newsnight excerpt:

Comments

[Lucy Crichton]

Ben Goldacre has been particularly strong on this issue on his own site (http://www.badscience.net/?p=652) and in the Guardian for the past few years.

On a smilar vein check out his stuff on the fish oil in schools project (http://www.badscience.net/?p=649#more-649)

Lucy

[Poor child]

great! thanks very much for sharing!

[Alan Coady]

Did you see Charlie Brooker's piece on Brain Gym? http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/07/education