A wide range of Primary classroom activities, reviews and resources has been developed and published over the years originally by MAPE and, more recently since the merger in 2004, by Naace.

The Direct2U service was a weekly email service produced by Becta in partnership with Naace. The service was for primary teachers and offered lesson plans featuring ICT in activities based on six subject strands. The service is discontinued but you can view the lesson plans in this archive.

In 1988, while teaching a professional development course for teachers concerning the use of telecommunications in education, I had an experience that changed me irrevocably. I had just finished describing the expectations for the final project, when a student raised her hand and asked if she could produce a video instead of writing a paper. The question caught me totally off guard. As I paused, mouth agape, I could feel old thinking and new paradigms chafing against each other like psychic tectonic plates. Watching a video was easy enough - but evaluating it as a school assignment? In the end, I told her that I would be happy to accept a video. In reality I was troubled by the fact that my print-based education had not prepared me for that moment or for the many moments like it that were sure to come.

This article attempts to provide you with all you need to know about preparing digital images for print and web publication.

Becta produced ideas and activities using ICT across the curriculum. These can be found at http://forum.ngfl.gov.uk/direct2u
This article reproduces three of the Direct2U activities. The first is a D&T task for Year 1. This is followed by two Art & Design activities, one for Year 1 and the other for Year 2.

Geoff Dellow gave a really detailed response to my request for him to describe how he downloaded his video clip onto his website . . . however, I wanted to know more . . .

An interpretation of QCA Art Unit 2A ‘Picture This’

This follows on nicely from work done in QCA Art Unit 1A ‘Self –portrait’

The following ‘step-through’ example uses Textease Studio CT but could be appropriately done with any other paint package.

In this article Caroline Atherton describes how she integrated art and design and design technology into a History unit studying the Aztecs, and the particular role ICT played in this work.

In this article Chris Hackett describes how children became engrossed in learning as they were presented with a range of scenarios.

In this article Glenys Hart summarises the content of some of the Regional Broadband Consortia's individual grids for learning with reference to Art and Design and Design and Technology.