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.

Kar2ouche is a commercially produced program that allows students to create imaginative animations with a full range of templates. Students can to add backgrounds, characters, voices and objects to support their multimedia projects.

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.

This paper is not about 'the Literacy Hour' - teachers have got this well sorted. If anything, it is a plea to move on. Many years ago, when working in Special Education carved upon every part of my psyche were the penetrating words of my Headteacher, "Every lesson is a speech and language lesson." So, too, Literacy Skills, in their broadest sense, should be an integral part of every lesson if not a mandatory part of every school's mission statement. The title, therefore, demands more than a cursory nod of approval.

Julie Steer's Article is inspired by early memories of her grandmother reading Charles Dickens's classic novel, Oliver Twist during a four-day visit. Julie reviews how a suite of software, 'The Literacy Collection' replicates some of her grandmother's techniques of story-telling: summarise, substitute, explain, visualise and performance.

For the September 'hotseat' we welcome Shaun Knight who has worked for Manchester City Council throughout his career both as a teacher and as an adviser across the city in primary, secondary and special schools. Manchester has recently undergone a restructuring programme and Shaun currently works as a Learning Strategy Officer with schools in the central district of the city.

Shaun will be live in the hotseat from 4-5pm on Wednesday 17th and Wednesday 24th September. Please leave questions for Shaun before during and after the live sessions.