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.

ICT Year 6: Creating Electronic Big Books

The Direct2U service was a weekly email subscription service for primary teachers from Becta, which ran during 2005/6. The scheme offered lesson plans featuring ICT in activities based on six subject strands. The service has now been discontinued but Becta have given us permission to use a selection from the plans in this magazine. A full archive of all the Direct2U activities can be found at http://forum.ngfl.gov.uk/direct2u

Introduction

In this activity, children work in small groups to design and create an electronic Big Book for the younger children in the school. They will take into account the reading age and interests of younger children and the format of Big Books, and test out their books and modify them if necessary. There is not room here to give full details of how to use Big Book Maker but it is well supported with manuals and guides http://primary.naace.co.uk/activities/BigBookMaker/

Focus: Summertime Special

This summertime special issue of Sharing Success is a set of activities appropriate to the last few weeks of the summer term. These include a piece by Doug Dickinson offering an art activity suitable for most age groups and a reprise of the summer activities published in Week 26 of the Direct2U scheme in 2005. The third article (which is not available in the pdf) is a collection of holiday photographs for use in the Y3 D2U activity - Make a postcard.

If you feel that you could make a contribution to Sharing Success please contact me at h.govier@btopenworld.com.

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.

Focus: Digital photography

Welcome to Issue 5 of the Naace e-magazine. We start with an exciting contribution from Philip Griffin on the use of the camera integral with a mobile phone and follow this up with a geography activity from the Direct2U series. This was originally written with digital cameras in mind but the mobile phone could be used even more effectively to achieve the same ends.

If you feel that you could make a contribution to Sharing Success please contact me at h.govier@btopenworld.com.