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.

This is the second (for Sharing Success) in our series of articles

... through which we hope to inform you about the increasing opportunities to use design and technology-related software which is freely available on the internet.

We believe that each of the pieces of software we will be featuring are in the public domain and are available for educational, non-commercial use. Even so, we advise you to carefully read any restrictions or conditions of use before installing the software. However, for the free version of SketchUp featured in this article, we understand that the providers, Google, are delighted for schools to use it.

Trawling the hidden depths of Microsoft Word!

This article was first published in the D&T Association's Magazine and is the eighth in our series of articles through which the authors hope to inform you about the increasing opportunities to use design and technology-related software which is freely available on the internet. In this article, however, the authors are not looking at a piece of free software, but one which is possibly the most widely used program in primary and secondary schools - the ubiquitous Microsoft Word.

This article will explore the use of blogs and other tools to support student teachers in writing reflective journals. The main context for this is the school (or college) experience of trainee teachers on the one year secondary PGCE. Blogs are also used in the first year professional studies module in the School of Education's BA Joint Honours programme. The approach and lessons learned are equally applicable to students on other programmes, and at other levels.

Susia Arnott and Marie Hindmarch, Advisory Teachers for ICT in North Tyneside LA, developed activities based upon The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch and The Giant Jam Sandwich to support the Langdale Early Years SCITT ICT. children.

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.

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.

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.

This article details a headteacher's journey from a sceptical view of the value of ICT in developing children's artistic skills to conversion.