Newly Qualified Teachers (NQT's) can now join Naace for one year at the special price of £20.

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).

The 'Let's Play – 2008 Project' focuses on using the Oracle Education Foundation's www.think.com to provide a range of online opportunities for children to build their own websites. The project has been led by Educational Consultant and Advanced Skills Teacher, Paul Vale, as an extension to ‘The 101+ Club Project’ which ran in 2006-2007.

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.

I shall be at the BETT Exhibition at Olympia in London between 9-12 January 2008 and look forward to meeting familiar and new faces. In previous years I have looked at what I can get out of BETT in terms of the freebies on offer as well as information gleaned from people spoken to and seminars attended. In recent years I seem to have been giving more than I have taken away, being invited to share stands and give presentations.

What constitutes a good lesson? Is it good preparation, planning and assessment? Does it have to cover all the strands in the National Literacy or Numeracy Strategies? How can what the children have experienced be measured?

The idea for the 'sing-a-round event', which is part of the Oracle Education Foundation's 'Let's Play 2008 Project' I have been leading, came from bumping into Maurice Walsh from Manchester's Music service whilst working with one of the project schools. He asked about the project and as he had links in Beijing was there any way we could add another event that involved sharing singing between schools.

In this issue we continue to follow the success of 'The Let's Play 2008 Project' and look at the real positives that can take place when schools come together for a sports afternoon.

One of the exciting things about the Let's Play Project has been to link schools within the UK with schools across the world both on-line and face to face. I was fortunate to visit the De Rank School in Westdaam close to Amsterdam for a couple of days. Having visited the school during the project I was involved with last year, thanks to the budget airlines, the first thing that pleasantly surprising is how inexpensive, easy and accessible Holland can be. Our stay for 3 nights came to under £250 for the whole visit - (including flights, trains, taxis, food and accommodation).

The B of the Bang is a sculpture that stands at the entrance to Manchester's Sport City, home of Manchester City football club and site of the 2002 Commonwealth Games.

I love the story behind the name: British champion sprinter Linford Christie once said that he starts running not just when he hears the bang of the starting pistol, but on the B of the bang.

So where else to take the Let's Play Project to meet? So having made copious arrangements with the very helpful staff the afternoon at Sports City came to life - enabling project schools to meet up, and as well as spending time talking to friends old and new (from web-pages and previous meetings) - there was now a sporting purpose to the afternoon.

The target for the project was the setting up 200 children with their own interactive web-sites in 4 weeks! The idea was to set up safe on-line web accounts using www.think.com with primary children and their teachers and to help them appreciate the potential that Web 2.0 technologies have to enhance teaching and learning.

The project ran for 4 weeks and was a joint venture sponsored by The Oracle Education Foundation and MirandaNet abased at the Institute of Education in London. The project sponsored several other schools and culminated in a meeting to share work and achievements on July 10th 2008 at the MirandaNet's 'WLE centre'(World e-Citizens) based at the Institute of Education in London.