Powerful new software becomes available next month to help primary teachers deliver the subject they are reckoned to be least comfortable with. ICT Alive, from RM, is a complete package of lessons and materials for key stages 1 and 2, based on the English and Scottish ICT curricula. It supports teachers in developing their own skills as well as assessing those of their pupils.

ICT is one of the least well taught subjects in the curriculum, according to Ofsted. Research by RM revealed that teachers found differentiation and assessment particularly difficult and were often bitter about the demands of Ofsted. ICT Alive has been devised to help teachers in these areas and is based on lessons learned from the company’s earlier title, Maths Alive, but has extra activities and facilities.

RM consulted with teachers, schools, local authorities, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, Learning and Teaching Scotland and the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency. The software and materials, which come on two CD-Roms, will run on single workstations or a school network as well as whiteboards, and can be accessed over the internet.

“Its ideal home is an ICT suite with interactive whiteboard,” says RM’s Ian Skeels. “The assessment features are what cause most excitement for people we have shown it to.”

So how does a teacher use ICT Alive? It starts with a simple screen showing the tools in a panel - word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentations, graphics and “integrated” programs (Textease in the preview version), along with programs for specific curriculum tasks such as control technology.

There are only two other buttons on the screen: Lessons and Teacher. One click on the latter logs the user on to the management and preparation area, which offers teacher tools, educational support, a guided tour, a facility to connect a laptop from the school network or detach it, and links for the co-ordinator.

Teacher tools takes you directly to your plan for the current units of work and lists the elements entailed. For example, in a study unit titled “Writing in the right style”, you can see the list of six lessons. Clicking on any lesson shows its elements, advice on how to deliver them and how long they should take. There is a preview and, where necessary, instructions, worksheets and resources. All the on-screen information can be printed. The final lesson is always a task that teachers can use for summative assessments.

It is also possible to get to this information another way. Four buttons at the top of the screen identify the lesson structure RM has developed: plan, prepare, assess, report. So you can move to the relevant part of the process by clicking a button.

Back on the main screen, the other button, Lessons, is for pupils or teachers to access prepared materials. The button opens a screen organised according to your classes. Clicking on any one of these opens a panel with an identical row of buttons - unit opener (an animated introduction), lesson starter (to put it in context), ICT skills, lesson activity (to put the skills into practice), plenary (for the teacher to reinforce the skills learned) and end (to return to the menu). All these activities have detailed teaching notes with references to the curriculum and each one has an assessment guide.

The sheer scale of this package is impressive. However, the real test will be full evaluation by teachers using it in schools.

ICT Alive (a complete ICTcurriculum course for KS1-2): pound;89 per pupil workstation per year (upgrades free); pound;299 per pupil workstation for perpetuity; pound;199 for Window Box users. Teachers can install it on their home PC or laptop free if the machine is not used with pupils.A full review of ICT Alive will appear in TES Online magazine on January 3.Tel: 08709 200200www.rm.com