No - not a nostalgic nod to the "good ole days" when the cane ruled.

Rather, it's a reference to this article on the BBC News Website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8483615.stm

37% of Secondary Students use their home PCs (and Apples, if they are rich enough!) for  study. This contrasts with only 30% of them using computers at school.

"There is an increasing blurring between learning-time and leisure-time and so computers in the home are becoming as important as those in the classroom," says Ray Fleming, from Microsoft. This begs several questions:

• What are we doing to support students as they use their computers at home?
• How can we guide and influence students to use "good practice" outside of the school environment?
• How do we harness young people's enthusiasm for using ICT.

Just as an aside, an informal survey I did with some Sixth Formers indicate that at any one time in an evening when students are working on their computers, there are as many as 14 "friends" registering as on-line on a Facebook page. It does make me wonder whether the school based VLE's days are numbered, and schools will move towards using Facebook groups and Twitter to encourage study in increasingly innovative ways.

As the mobile phone ads used to say . . . "The Future's Bright!"