It is becoming increasingly difficult to deny the power of technology in the classroom to inspire, create, connect, as well as train and prepare our students with the skills for their future jobs.

The evolution of technology has brought with it numerous benefits. Education, in particular, has experienced a multitude of these benefits as technology continues to reach a variety of learners in many different ways. Silicon Valley has, in fact, been turning its attention to education more frequently. Technology education reached $1.87 billion last year (a 55% increase). So what does this mean for teachers?

Over the last 100 years in teaching, how much has changed? Could you take a teacher from 1915 and drop them into a modern classroom? Apart from the strange haircuts and unfamiliar clothes they’d barely notice the difference, because the majority of school is still lecture driven. The teacher stands at the front, disseminating knowledge to the students. Now undertake the same scenario but with a surgeon. Bring a surgeon forward 100 years and it’s a different story. In a modern operating room our time traveller would be overwhelmed with sights and sounds. This is because technology has revolutionised surgery.

I’m a firm believer in only using technology for learning when it actually brings something to the learning. When it comes to SEN, technology can transform the opportunities for learning that are available to pupils more than any other way.

What are the essential resources for the supply teacher? Sharon Wood, founder of National Supply Teacher Week, takes a look at her absolute favourites.

On supply, normal rules don’t apply. You may be left a set of plans, fully resourced, for the day. Or you may turn up with five minutes (10 minutes after you received the call to go) before the children arrive, to an empty desk, a missing laptop, and no password for the photocopier. You don’t know that the children have some work to finish off in any spare five minutes. You need to make sure that the children are fully occupied and engaging with their task to help minimise fuss and poor behaviour. You may be warned assembly is a 9:30 sharp, only to arrive and discover that it has been cancelled for today. In short, you need help! From five minute time fillers, to whole session activities ideas on the hop, apps are an essential tool for supply teachers.

Apple have produced a series of ebooks to help teachers integrate apps into their daily classroom practice. The Apps in the Classroom series is inspired by Apple Distinguished Educators, and each book contains a collection of activities that allow students to utilize a particular app to demonstrate their learning.

Hearing solutions company, Conversor has launched a new brand for its voice recording apps and edit suite family of products. The Notetalker website uses a simple user interface to share their innovative recording solutions. These apps allow students to record classes, with the ability to bookmark or tag important information with a simple bookmark or a text description. The software is easy to use and organise, and both filenames and folders can be made or changed at any moment. With these features, Notetalker apps are particularly useful for SEN students.

When thinking about what we would like our students to be able to do, the above definition really appeals to me. I believe that in preparing our learners for the real world, which is competitive and often challenging - we should also be teaching them how to (in the words of the dictionary definition) create ‘meaningful ideas, forms, methods and interpretations.’ We don’t want our students to be passive consumers of digital or analogue culture, I want them to be involved in shaping it.

With Black Friday and the Christmas shopping season a recent memory, now is perhaps a good time to look at ways to teach children the value of money. Here are five apps that can help in this process.

The fatal mistake schools make when deploying mobile technology is thinking that by purchasing the hardware, that’s the hard part done. In fact, the easiest step in a school’s iPad journey is buying the technology; the successful use of the technology is determined by what schools do after this.