A SHOULDER injury has put a Darlington teacher out of the finals of a nationwide award scheme.

Ms Diana Lawson, community lecturer at Darlington college of technology, was in so much pain from a damaged ligament that she decided she could not face a four-hour journey to Coventry for her presentation to the BECTA ICT awards last Friday.

She had seen off competition from hundreds of entrants to be shortlisted for the post-16 inclusion category and stood to win a £2,500 prize for herself, and an equal amount for the college if she won.

She told the D&S Times: "It is disappointing but I felt in the end that I had to withdraw. It was very nice to be nominated but I don't do the job for the glory, I do it because I enjoy it. That is a reward in itself."

The award scheme is jointly supported in its second year by BT Education, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency and The Times Educational Supplement. It recognises projects and initiatives that make imaginative use of ICT to encourage learning.

A spokesman for the organisers said: " We were very impressed by Diana and her work in the community. She has done a tremendous job at reaching out to people who are traditionally hard to reach and hard to engage in the learning process.

"She has taken learning programmes into the community to places such as mums' and toddlers' groups, community centres, disability, groups, clubs and pubs and village halls.

"She has used ICT to remove barriers of perceived disability or learning difficulty and has helped many people begin the process of change their lives. She has clearly demonstrated how ICT can empower individuals and communities."

Since she started seven years ago, Ms Lawson has taken laptops into the community to places as diverse as a Stokesley pub, where she taught local farmers, to a Darlington nursery where she helped Bangladeshi and Bengali women.

"The women at Corporation Road nursery learn basic skills, which give them a general overview of how to use word processing, research the internet and use e-mail. Their men come into the college to be taught.

"It all started seven years ago when three women on Firthmoor asked for help with literacy and numeracy skills and now we have an on-line learning centre there," she said.

The names of the successful finalists are being kept secret until the BECTA awards ceremony in January.