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Microsoft have a set of Office 2007 posters available for free for schools.

Details can be found on the Microsoft Blog: blogs.msdn.com/ukschools/archive/2008/06/17/free-office-2007-classroom-posters.aspx

If you’d like me to send you a set, just email with your name, school name and address. Let them know if you’re already using Office 2007 in the classroom, or if you’re rolling it out this summer, and then they will get them in the post ASAP.  (If you just can’t wait, and you want to download the PDFs, then click here to get them from SkyDrive)

As part of a course I was running last night, I had cause to revisit Picasa, Google’s free image manipulation software, and I must say that it was well worth revisiting. I had forgotten how powerful it is. A particular favourite is the ‘collage’ facility, which enable you to take a number of images and display them in a number of  interesting ways. So - just a reminder - if you haven’t used Picasa for a while, or you have never used it and are in need of some imaging software, have a go! You can download the software from http://picasa.google.com

I was recently asked where to get film clips/trailers from the net. Came up with the following:

http://creative.bfi.org.uk/titles/ - British film institute
http://www.imdb.com/ - scroll down to the bottom of the page and there’s a link for ‘trailers’, which can be accessed via an index
Obviously, http://www.youtube.com (using our friend www.zamzar.com to get it to the children)
http://www.apple.com/trailers/

Health warning! All of these site will need checking! The videos should either be downloaded (copyright permitting!) or links should be made directly to that video. I wouldn’t necessarily want young children to be browsing these sites in school!
If you know of any other useful sites- please share

Billy from Thomas Adams has uploaded all his x-games resources to the KS4 documents section within the ICT area of the new Shropshire Learning Gateway.  These resources are only available to Shropshire schools:

https://www.shropshirelg.net/curriculum/foundsubjects/ict/secondary/Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=%2fcurriculum%2ffoundsubjects%2fict%2fsecondary%2fDocuments%2fKS4%2fX%20Games&FolderCTID=&View=%7b00AB74E3%2d6FA2%2d4181%2dB4B3%2dEFCD662FBD24%7d

These resources support the use of an xbox to provide evidence towards the ASDAN qualification at KS4.

Thanks to Andy Davies of Clunbury for drawing our attention to 2Simple’s software offer. For a cost of £999 for existing 2Simple customers (£1499 to new customers), you can purchase the entire suite of 2Simple software for each computer in your establishment for ever. The normal cost of this would be over £8000.
You also have access to Simple City and 2Type on the internet, as well as training videos, planning ideas etc.
2Simple say ‘This is a TIME LIMITED offer and will only last for as long as there is still birthday cake! Hurry! Contact 2Simple with your purchase order number right now to order the whole 2Simple Collection for this incredible price.
To order, you can call: 020 8203 1781, fax: 020 8202 6370,email: collection@2simple.com or visit: www.2simple.com/collection’

As well as the Flickr advanced search ‘Creative commons’ option, HERE is a very useful list of sources of images which are free for use in schools.