Paul Williamson has spent a great deal of time empowering teachers in different subjects to use their Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) effectively. The successes have become increasingly apparent with every area of the school moving forward rapidly.

Broadgreen are one of the few high schools across the country that run a baccalaureate programme. The programme is highly successful one for their students and are Becta's ICT Excellence Awards 2008 - joint runner-up award winners for the Best whole school in the North West category.

Crossley Heath have used their Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in so many ways to improve teaching, the delivery of the curriculum as well as the enjoyment of learning taking place. The following description highlights the way the schools secure email system is being used to help students make dramatic improvements in the quantity and quality of assignments set.

Naace have been successful in securing a TDA bid won by Steven Coombes based at Bath Spa University and being delivered as a 'Visual Learning Course' by Christina Preston and John Cuthell at MirandaNet (based at The Institute of Education, London).

Imagine a world where schoolchildren are contacting pupils in schools around the world through a totally safe, virtual environment, chatting about differences, sharing pictures, and posting opinions about stories they've read and written. Their teachers are making sure skills in literacy, numeracy, ICT and communication are being improved. The children are sharing ideas about how to live more healthy lifestyles. This Article illustrates how some of this is possible through the 101+ Club Project, supported by by the Oracle Education Foundation.

In this Article, Christy outlines how ICT may be used to help teachers ensure that lessons on 'world writing' are successful. It provides a review of the range of resources available from BBC Active designed for use on a whiteboard, supporting whole-class teaching.

MirandaNet hosted a two-day conference on 7 - 8 February 2008 where academics and practitioners met to share their work on interactive whiteboards and visulaisers.The course focused on a balance between academics and practitioners sharing their work linked to IWs and visualisers and was led by Christina Preston (who founded MirandaNet based at the Institute of Education) and Dr John Cuthell.

As part of a longer article to published in the next edition of Primary Focus, Jim Fanning provides his blog of a two-day flexible learning course. Is this the way of the future?

Jim Fanning provides a picture of flexible learning at the Tideway School.

What does globalisation mean?

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects relating to Globalisation is that means different things to different people. The DCSF aims to focus on the new curriculum for ICT and across all subjects and dimensions. However, Globalisation infers the 'bigger picture' and the use, development or acceptance of ideas, Web 2.0 technology as well as communicating and sharing information globally. Put more simply Globalisation refers to using ICT to help schools prepare children to take their place in the world/become global citizens.