If anyone has any doubts about the way that ICT can inspire, motivate and lead to incisive thinking, they need only look and listen to the people entered for the Becta ICT in Practice Awards, sponsored by TES and BT that education secretary of state for early years and school standards, Professor Ted Wragg will present at BETT 2002.

Assessing is never easy. Question: how do you judge the work of a teacher who has a yearly budget of pound;200 against one who is in one of the richest schools in the UK? Answer: with difficulty, but it can be done. Focus on the creativity. As last year, creativity is in the foreground, as Ted Wragg will underline in his TES keynote: “Are curriculum demands stifling the creative use of ICT in classrooms?”. Last year’s BETTshow visitors will never forget the dancers who performed to music that they had created on the Internet. They will also remember the variations on LS Lowry, “Lowry Layers”, produced by Carl Sherlock’s pupils in south Wales. It would be difficult to imagine a more imaginative use of PaintShop Pro.

Rhys Evans in Llangollen inspires pupils to go beyond him. They are now designing, making, packaging and marketing lighting products. In addition to the work that Rhys does in school, he works in feeder schools sharing resources and expertise. His students feel good about this: “He taught us so that we could teach him.” They are now so confident that they are unafraid to criticise the ideas and software choices of their teacher.

Sawtry School pioneers the use of wireless laptops, and it is also home to the pioneering work of Julie Messenger. Julie has developed a system that enables her students to increase autonomous working, giving them freedom to develop at their own pace. Working in a similar manner, Jonathan Boyle at Thomas Telford School has created a situation where design and technology students can work at their own pace and in their own way.

Another pioneer is Arbour Vale School in Slough. Video-conferencing has been slow to make a major impact, but Mike Griffiths is sure that its time is nigh.

“Free range chickens, not battery hens”, is the slogan that Richard Jones used to introduce his work. Richard, of Malpas Junior School in Newport, has realised that the very structure of the school can inhibit the free flow of information and deny the kind of access he wants to give. Richard believes that computers should be in the classroom and available at all times. To ensure maximum use he took some classroom walls down so that two classes can have immediate access to the same small group of computers.

Access for the very young is a feature this year. Both Veronica Carter in Haslemere and Clare Cooper in Monmouth are making ICT a part of the learning life of the children. Clare is challenging her pupils. One of the most intriguing pieces of work was designing sunglasses for Teddy. This was patiently explained by the six-year-olds who have done the work with a datalogger and an ecologger. “We took the logger and held it against the lens to test how much light was going through. Yellow was the highest so that meant that Teddy would have sore eyes. Purple was the best for Teddy’s eyes.” What will they achieve subsequently?

John Thornley in the Isle of Man is concerned with teacher achievement. He took a step that was so breathtaking and so obvious that no one has yet followed. He ensures that every full-time teacher in the Isle of Man is given a laptop plus training. This is no run of the mill laptop, but an iBook with wireless capability built in as well as the software to download and edit films. The Isle of Man training is so good that occasionally John hears criticism that teachers while away the less stimulating parts of in-service courses by sending messages to one another across the room, or that they surf the Internet.

Julie Frankland is pioneering a different kind of support. Undeterred by the way some LEAs have reduced support for ICT, Julie set up an imaginative partnership School House Partnership, with Longroyde School. This benefits the school and Julie, and the team have a base and the use of part of the school to work with other schools.

Innovation was a category this year. One of the most intriguing entries comes from Essex. Jo Hotchkiss and John Sams have developed an idea based on a flipchart, called FLIPPI. It’s an assessment tool - a delightfully simple way of obtaining an overview of a child’s achievements in ICT. Difficult to describe, but simple to use, you should go and see it at BETT.

Tiffin Girls School in Kingston-upon-Thames is one of the most prestigious schools in the UK and Graham Willett has started to develop ICT to a high level. This is not an easy task. It takes a lot to convince staff at academic schools that ICT is going to add anything to what they can already offer. It will be interesting to see what they achieve in the near future. Richard Wallace at Ballyclare High school has done similar work with a similar staff.

When you move from a school like Tiffins to the Creggan estate in Londonderry, you travel the length of public education in the UK. Bill O’Donnell works in a school where 90 per cent of the children have free school meals and some of the worst rioting in Northern Ireland has taken place just outside the school gates. Inside the school there is a level of peace and sanity that must have been hard to achieve and the stimulating work that Bill is doing contributes to that.

Cathy Dyson, working in the Women’s Electronic Village Hall in Manchester, is concerned with community, teaching with sensitivity, flair and care for the wide range of people she deals with. Finally, one of the best causes for optimism was seeing the work of Emma Taylor at Ocker Hill School in Sandwell. After just two years of teaching, she is skilled, confident and passionate about what ICT can do for her pupils. She uses the technology as naturally as a pen.