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 this article we are looking at a piece of software that has the potential to be very helpful in textiles activities at Key Stages 2 and 3. We believe that this piece of software is in the public domain and available for educational, non-commercial use. Even so, we advise you to carefully read any restrictions or conditions of use before installing 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 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.