The Naace Annual Strategic Conference and Exhibition opened in Torquay in early March 2008. This is the definitive ICT Conference in the UK for all those involved in advancing education through the use of modern technologies in learning and teaching.

Naace has introduced a 'hot-seat' where invited colleagues field questions over a four week period. Our guest in the 'hot-seat' will either answer online at specific times, or at pre-arranged regular intervals. We look forward to hearing from you!

The Social Networking Conference was held at The Palace Venue, Lower Gungate, Tamworth, Staffs, B79 7AF, on Monday 5 November 2007. The aim of the conference was to provide a focus for discussions relating to social networking on the Internet. There were specific references to the educational benefits and potential dangers of social networking, privacy and supervision issues and the legal implications for students and their teachers.

Here you will find both the inputs and the outputs from this successful and timely event.

Naace has been invited to offer two briefing sessions in the Local Authority Lounge. These cover ICT CPD experiences for ICT advisors and the use of web-conferencing to support transition and MFL. Naace will be making four contributions to the Seminar Programme covering collaborative tools in teaching and learning, personalised learning, transforming learning and a report on the 'Let's Play Project'.

This one one-day conference to appraise developments in the use of electronic data and implications for institutional and multi-agency planning enabled colleagues to get together for the purpose of updates, advice, guidance, hints and tips, presentations and hands-on sessions.

The most recent update day for Naace Sponsoring Partners was held on 22 November 2007 at the Quaker Friends House, 173 Euston Road, London, NE1 2BJ. The programme included stimulating and thought provoking sessions to provide updates on Government policy, direction and delivery.

Going to BETT is always an exciting prospect. Will there be new interesting technologies that can enhance the teaching learning process? It is impossible to see everything at BETT, in fact sometimes I think it is impossible to find anything at BETT, it's so huge but I always hope to make new discoveries.

Waiting outside in the weak winter sun I talked to the people around me to understand who was coming to the exhibition. I talked to South Africans, Australians and I could see from the badges that this was a truly international exhibition. We should be proud and realise how lucky we are this event has such a draw.

This article is a personal view of some of the things that caught my eye and it is not meant to be representative of the whole exhibition.

Finding schools that your own school can work with is always a challenge. But JANET Collaborate could make the process a lot easier, as Terry Freedman explains.

Our second 'hot-seat' guest is Gareth Davies, Chair of Naace Board of Management. He will be answering your questions from 6 February onwards.