The 'hotseat' guest for December is Sarah Peacock who works at one of Sheffield's City Learning Centres. I met Sarah as part of the successful Visual Learning Course which I attended earlier this year which Naace, MirandaNet based at the Institute of Education and Bath Spa University won the TDA bid to run as a CPD programme.

Sarah will be live in the 'hotseat' on Monday 15th December between 4-5pm. Please post questions before, during and after the live sessions.

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).

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 more studies emerge into the potential application of computer games in both industry and education I'm interested in whether computer games can hone cognitive skills in the same way that a recent US study claims that they can improve fine control skills for surgeons. 'Wii warm-up good for surgeons' BBC News Online 17 January 2008.

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.