There is no shortage of online communities, but you have to be a good host to attract the visitors. Regular awards and digital prizes certainly help, but the main attraction of Walkers Showcase (run by TAG Learning with support from Sun) is the impressive range of children’s work on show at this online gallery. The number of schools now registered is 2,457, with 4,369 exhibits, so there is plenty to look at and listen to and you can also enter your own work. David Hockney was the major influence on the featured award-winning artworks that won Ashfield School in Nottingham a scanner.

www.walkersshowcase.co.uk

Direct line to creativity

There is plenty of creativity on show at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. “Creativity: find it, promote it” is a new service to help teachers support children’s creativity. It’s the product of three years’

work with 120 teachers and there are helpful examples of children’s work.

The QCA now wants feedback on the site from teachers.

www.ncaction.org.ukcreativity

Soar away business

Paper aeroplanes are fun and cheap. There are adverts and links to sales, always uncomfortable partners for education, but Alex’s Paper Airplanes website has just been approved by the National Grid for Learning, presumably because there are excellent plans to cut and fold paper into a wide range of aerodynamic shapes.

Trouble was, on the day Teacher visited, our web browser window morphed into four with the legend “You are the 98127435th visitor to our website!!”, promising pound;1,101 of travel vouchers if we rang a US freephone number within three minutes. Still, the paper planes looked great. Email: teacher.online@becta.org.uk).

www.paperairplanes.co.uk

Lap it up

If you don’t have a work laptop computer yet don’t worry, because there is plenty of money available, and the government’s Laptops for Teachers scheme has been extended for two years (at pound;90 million a year). Find out about the project, the most up-to-date models (and compare them) and suppliers on the new Becta website at http:lft.ngfl.gov.uk

Just deserts

If you are ever tempted, pay a visit to Nottingham’s Galleries of Justice website to remind yourself of the wages of crime, billed as “the only place in the country where you could be arrested, sentenced and executed all on one site”. You can click through a range of interactive exhibitions, including a Victorian courtroom and an early 18th-century prison.

www.galleriesofjustice.org.uk