In the first programme of Naace Connect we are treated to five episodes:

Mobile Phones supporting English

Rachel Johnson, an English teacher at Sandon High School in Stoke-on-Trent, shows how she harnesses students' mobile phones to improve learning outcomes in English.

Web 2.0 Applications in Modern Foreign Languages

Jose Picardo, Head of Modern Languages at Nottingham High School for Boys, describes how he harnesses web applications to improve learning outcomes for his students.

Barriers to adoption in Secondary Schools compared to Primaries

Professor Angela McFarlane outlines why it is often more difficult to develop innovative ICT-enabled approaches in secondary schools.

Bridging the Digital Divide: 1

Becta's Niel McLean describes the Home Access Project.

Bridging the Digital Divide: 2

Becta's Vanessa Pittard reports on early findings from the Home Access Project.

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.

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/

Colin Hill is a KS1 ICT coordinator in Southport.
In this article he describes a small scale project to investigate the impact of ICT on the performance of children with literacy difficulties.

Richard describes the role of ICT in helping students with complex learning difficulties access literacy.

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.

In February 2006 the Northamptonshire Advisory and Inspection Service, Primary ICT Team began a project with six schools from the Huxlow Cluster which was set up to show how using a video camera could impact on the raising of attainment in Literacy, particularly with written work.

In 1988, while teaching a professional development course for teachers concerning the use of telecommunications in education, I had an experience that changed me irrevocably. I had just finished describing the expectations for the final project, when a student raised her hand and asked if she could produce a video instead of writing a paper. The question caught me totally off guard. As I paused, mouth agape, I could feel old thinking and new paradigms chafing against each other like psychic tectonic plates. Watching a video was easy enough - but evaluating it as a school assignment? In the end, I told her that I would be happy to accept a video. In reality I was troubled by the fact that my print-based education had not prepared me for that moment or for the many moments like it that were sure to come.

In this article the authors explain how different recording technologies can make classrooms more inclusive.