Geeked Out for the Holidays

Happy December Tech-y Teachers!!

As I sat on a beach in Cancun (yes, I'm bragging!) this past week & saw many, many emails come in for Christmas presents, Holiday ideas for the classroom, apps for the iPad etc...

I realized, more than ever, there is so much available for Education that can be educational for the kids as we try and get them to that last day before the holiday break.

In honour of this, I am going to pass along a few fun holiday techy-things that I've found in the past few weeks.

1. Using Apple TV to Mirror the iPad 2

While this one technically isn't holiday specific, I'm hearing so many teachers etc...mention that they have asked Santa to bring Apple TV for Christmas. With the last upgrade to iPad (beginning of November), the ability to connect Apple TV to an HDMI port and then mirror your iPad through your TV or HDMI enabled the iPad to be projected without any cables or dongles. Hooray!! Here's a You Tube video showing the whole process, it's a pretty easy set up. With Apple TV being around $100, it's a very affordable solution for bringing great content to the entire class & to have the iPad passed around the class easily.

2. Holiday Lessons on the SMART Exchange

There are some really fun new Holiday activities on the SMART Exchange. On the opening page, there is a link to the holiday collection, which I've put here for you:

I am particularly impressed with the content developed by "Robots and Cupcakes", their content is always brilliantly created. I like their 'Snowball Fight' and editable Math Flash game for using a Koosh Ball (or something else soft) to toss at the SMART Board. Great way to get some math in during the last few days/weeks of school!

3. 2Learn's Holiday Pages

The team at 2Learn in Alberta do an amazing job each month putting together great resources & timely web resources for K-12. In their latest Vantage Newsletter, they mentioned that in October, the 2Learn website had a record 8.47 million hits! Wow! I appreciate the various denominations represented from the religious standpoint, but also the 'winter' themed activities, for those who are non-denominational. In addition, the bilingual content is really strong.

I remember taking my Grade 1s on the Metropolitan Museum website & they were in awe of watching the Christmas story being told through legendary works of art at the museum. Thanks 2Learn!!

4. iPad Holiday Apps

OK, there is a reason this one is titled Geeked Out for the Holidays, as I won't tell you how geeky I felt when I got overly excited when Entertainment Weekly posted about the new Charlie Brown Christmas Interactive iPad app. It's just like the Charlie Brown TV Christmas Special, but it becomes an interactive app that you can read, listen to the narration, and even play along with the famous Linus & Lucy music on the piano. I normally don't spend that much on an app, but it's great. Just typing 'Christmas' or 'Holiday' into the App Store...and an amazing world awaits!