The BP Educational Service has launched a new Light and Pinhole Cameras resource and a Pinhole Photography Competition to help young people aged 11 to 14 explore and celebrate the science of light. The new video-led resources provides schools with the opportunity to celebrate the International Year of Light and Light-Based Technologies 2015, and pupils are also encouraged to build cameras and send in best pinhole photos as part of a competition.

Education suppliers HUE have been bringing schools to life with the HUE HD Pro, a classroom camera and visualiser that is the latest addition to their range of USB cameras. The gadget can view a full A4 page and project it onto the whiteboard via PCs and projectors, and is priced at £44.95 + VAT. HUE’s terrifically-received new device even won a Best in Show award at the prestigious ISTE 2015 conference in Philadelphia.

The iPad camera has so much potential in classrooms, however the camera app itself is limited in its features. With his experience of using video apps with students, Nik Peachey lists the best ones for enabling teachers to add annotations and commentaries to recorded video, and use video for creating journals, storytelling and speaking practice.

One of the great things about mobile devices such as tablets, iPads and phones is that most modern devices have good quality cameras and microphones built in.

This opens up a really wide range of potential for communication and speaking practice that used to be such a struggle to organise on older laptops and desktop computers.

App developers have also been quick to exploit the potential of this powerful tool and in this post I'd like to look at some of the tools that have been created and how they can be used for language development.