Winning applicants in phase three of the awards can get up to 5,000 to pay for equipment and materials for a project, training for the project team, travel and accommodation expenses, cover for practitioners and research material. Projects that are already receiving funding from other sources are ineligible.
The aim of the NGFL awards is to initiate projects that will develop skills and foster the integration of information and communications technology into learning and teaching at local level in innovative ways. A shortlist of 20 applicants will be drawn up by the end of January and they will be invited to present their projects to the judging panel.
One of the four winners in phase two of the awards last year, Aboyne Nursery School, Aboyne, has now been shortlisted for the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency awards.
The nursery's winning project last year involved using digital technology to record the adventures of children with a pair of teddy bears who accompanied a different child home each night.
The other winners were: Cauldeen Primary School Nursery in Inverness, which explored how children engaged with online activities via its own website, Killermont Primary School Nursery Class in Glasgow, which used computer technology to support children whose mother tongue is not English, and City of Edinburgh English as an Additional Language Service, which used Urdu word processing software and a portable computer to help bilingual children in several early primary and nursery classes.
