Lots of schools here in the UK and around the world are preparing for Christmas. We’re putting up the decorations at my school this week, so I thought that it might be useful to share a selection of ideas, activities and resources that can be used as part of Christmas activities over the next few weeks. If you have any idea, why not add it to the comments at the bottom of this page?

Learn about Christmas…

The wonderful Woodlands Junior school site is a fantastic source of information for those who would like to learn more about Christmas traditions in Britain:

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/xmas/

The-North-Pole.com also has information about how Christmas is celebrated around the world.

Lesson ideas and resources…

Visit the Christmas sections on Teaching Ideas and Primary Resources to discover lots of lesson ideas and activities. Why not get your younger children to write to Santa… or make a class Christmas tree?

You could also try making an Origami Christmas tree. Thanks to Mister G for sharing this on Twitter.

The BBC also has a useful site giving information about Victorian Christmas activities, with videos showing how to try lots of different crafts.

DK.com has a selection of Christmas clip-art which could be used as part of craft activities, or to liven up your interactive whiteboard slides.

Sparklebox also has a large collection of Christmas resources to download and enjoy. Don’t forget to use TeachrSearch to find Christmas teaching materials on a selection of fantastic sites.

Christmas Music…

Listen Live has a selection of Christmas radio stations that you can listen to. Feels like Christmas has some free (and legal!) downloadable Christmas music. Don’t forget to try the Dancing Santa at Northpole.com too!

Interactive sites to try…

Visit some of these sites to find Christmas / winter games to use on an interactive whiteboard, or as part of children’s independent activities using computers:

• Make a Flake – make your own snowflakes onscreen. This could be used as a starting point for making your own snowflakes with paper and scissors.
• NorthPole.com – an enormous site with lots of interactive and educational Christmas activities.
  
• Snowman Maker – create a snowman by dragging and dropping the different features.
• Winterbells – Children in my classes have always loved this game. How high can you get the bunny to bounce?

Simon Haughton has also created a list of interactive sites which he will be posting to his school website each day. Take a look at the Kent ICT and Northumberland NGfL sites for even more useful places to explore!

Do you have a favourite Christmas activity / resource? I’d love to hear about it in the comments…

As featured on the Kent ICT blog recently, Sherston have an amazing deal which is only available until 30th November 2009.

They are offering over 100 of their best multi-award winning software titles for £1099. All titles come with full site licences so you can install them across your entire school networks. Visit TAG Learning to find out more and to take advantage of the offer.

If you work at a school in Kent in the UK, read the Kent ICT blog to find out how you can get this deal for £799 (but you have to order before 23rd October 2009).

Last night was the first Teachmeet for Sussex and Kent. It took place at The Hop Farm in Paddock Wood and was a fantastic evening. I hope that I’ve managed to collate everyone’s ideas, presentations and links below… if I’ve missed anything, please let me know and I’ll update the post.

• Mark Warner (twitter) - Using Memiary in the Classroom - I was picked by the Fruit Machine to speak first. My previous blog post shows what my presentation was about, and includes a few things that I forgot to mention last night!
• Stephen Lockyer (twitter / website) - Bansho whiteboard techniques - Stephen discussed the use of the board in Japanese schools throughout the lesson. This was a really interesting concept, with learning objectives clearly displayed and separate areas of the board used for separate things (with collaboration areas / pupil work demo areas and more). One other key point was that once things are added to the board, they are not removed… nothing is rubbed out. I would definitely like to find out more about this, and it’s made me want to think about my own use of my Interactive Whiteboard and the black board in my present classroom. Stephen also mentioned the use of Glogster to create backgrounds for whiteboard slides / presentations – another trick that I’d like to try out.

• Jason Dilling (twitter / website) - Edmodo - Jason talked about the use of Edmodo with his class, using it to discuss and share ideas and set homework. Edmodo is another fantastic resource which is well worth trying if you’ve not seen it before.
• Chris Thomas - (twitter / website) - Using spreadsheets for classroom management and generating lesson activities - Chris has created some great spreadsheets which can be used in a number of ways. The first is hosted by Google Docs and allows Chris to keep records of his pupils’ reward system (merits and sunnygrams). The spreadsheet shows how many points each pupil has and automatically generates a graph to show pupils how many more points they need to receive a merit and / or sunnygram. These graphs are sent to pupils via Edmodo so that they had a way of checking at home and school.

• Chris also showed a Word document which uses mail merge to generate personalised worksheets for pupils, allowing the teacher to choose a particular multiplication table for them. The document then creates an activity sheet with simple sums and complex problems linked to the target set by the teacher. A fantastic idea… maybe Chris can show us how to make these in his next iPrimary tutorial?
• David Philips - (website) - Teaching relational Databases, Nintendo Wii Style! - David brought along his Nintendo Wii and demonstrated the use of games like ‘Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games’ to generate sets of data. This data was then used within databases to help children to understand the concepts more easily. Although this was targetted at secondary pupils, I can see the use of Wii to generate data also being useful with some of the ICT concepts that primary teachers have to teach explore with younger children.

• Joe Dale - (twitter / website) - Giving your Powerpoints the WOW factor - I was really impressed by Joe’s Powerpoint presentations when I watched his Teachers’ TV programme earlier in the week. Seeing them in action, with Joe talking about them, was incredible. He must have spent many hours creating these interactive resources, using clever techniques like colour coding and macros to build really engaging presentations. I can’t wait to try some of these out! Joe also mentioned his use of Animation Factory to find appealing cartoons and animations for this slides. I think I might be subscribing to that site in the near future!

• Anthony Evans (website) and Nicholas Hughes (twitter / website) – Anthony and Nick spoke about ICT and APP, offering a resource that they had to help schools with their assessment of ICT. They had inherited this from Julian Nietrzebka and are happy to send you a copy if you send them on DM on Twitter.
• Nick Hughes (twitter / website) - DSi in my classroom = engagement - Nick spoke briefly about his use of the Nintendo DSi games consoles (bought by his school’s PTA) as a web access tool, allowing the children to do online research alongside their peers who were using other tools. The photos on his blog show the children using a range of tools (including the DSi and laptops) completely naturally. I’d love to have access to these tools in my own classroom… something to aim for definitely.
• Danny Nicholson (twitter / website) - Classtools / Prezi - Danny’s blog is a great place for any whiteboard user. Last night, he mentioned a number of resources which teachers can take advantage of… including the Classtools Countdown timer and Prezi. Both of these are well worth looking at if you haven’t seen them before.

• James Barrett (twitter / website) - Online Games and Tools - James shared a number of his wonderful resources that are posted on his site www.ictgames.com and at the Kent NGFL site. Although I’ve used some of James’ games before, last night he showed a number that I had never seen before. I particularly liked the Whiteboard Dictionary (KS1 and KS2 versions) and Premiership Words which allow the teacher and pupils to make excellent use of an interactive whiteboard during writing sessions. James has an enormous collection of interactive resources which are all free to use, so his site is definitely worth exploring.

Lots of the speakers have included links and resources on their own sites, so it’s a good idea to take some time to look around what they’ve posted online.

Thanks to Stephen for organising the event and to Leon Cych (twitter) and Chris Thomas for filming it. Thanks also to everyone who came along in person, or participated and watched via the Flashmeeting.

I discovered so many new ideas and resources and met a lovely bunch of people (many of whom I’ve been talking to on Twitter for a while now but never actually met). If only all staff training events were this inspirational! I’m already looking forward to Teachmeet SUKE 2010.

James Barrett and the Kent ICT team have created a wonderful interactive number square, which has a huge range of options. You can set the square to show whole numbers and decimals, starting at a number of your choice (including zero). You can alter the number of rows shown and use colouring options to highlight particular numbers / groups of numbers…

www.kented.org.uk/ngfl/games/numberSquare/

It is an amazing resource for teachers who could use it on an interactive whiteboard. It could also be used by children / groups of children as a tool for their own learning.

Phew.. what a week! Over the past seven days, I’ve been busy with an Ofsted inspection at school, our summer fair, and a visit to (including a short presentation at) the Kent ICT conference 2009.

The conference was a chance to learn new ideas from the many speakers and talk to suppliers of educational / ICT resources. I was also asked to provide a brief presentation about the Myst work that we’ve been doing at my school.

Highlights from the day included:

• A presentation by John Davitt – John shared a range of tools and ideas, including his Learning Event Generator. There is also a Homework Generator, which sounds useful. As I’ve been using Edmodo to distribute homework recently, I’ve needed to find more generic homework activities (because of copyright issues), so this will give a handy selection of ideas.

• Animations from psycho65… Matt showed a Prezi presentation (watch it here) which included a number of his pupils’ wonderful stop-motion animation.
• Presentations by Tim Rylands… Tim came back to Kent to share lots of new sites that I’d never heard of before. Some of these included Fighting Malaria (an incredible site with interactive photos and sounds which transport you to some amazing locations), Wordsift (which ‘sifts’ through your passages of text, finding definitions, images, synonyms and more) and Switcheroozoo (a wonderful site which lets you create your own creatures). Tim also recommended the Wii game ‘Wild Earth – African Safari’ which inspired me to make a new ‘Games to Enhance Learning‘ presentation on Ideas to Inspire.
• Tim also asked a few Kent teachers (including myself) to share some of the work that they had been doing with Myst since his presentation at the last Kent conference. It was really interesting to see the amazing work that other schools have been doing, and it was also nice to be able to share some of my own children’s achievements. You can view the Prezi that I used here.

Find out more about the Kent ICT conference on the Kent ICT blog and Tim Rylands’ blog.

As a teacher in Kent, here in the UK, I’m very lucky to be able to call upon support of a fantastic team of advisors. The ICT team, in particular, are incredibly active and produce lots of wonderful resources to make things easier for those who work in schools. These materials are freely accessible to educators, whether you work in Kent or not.

Their Kent NGFL site is an amazing resource, and is definitely worth checking out if you have an interest in using ICT in the classroom. Don’t forget to read their blog too.