12 Tech-Infused Holiday Activities

In today’s episode, we'll count down 12 classroom activities that combine technology and the holiday season.. Visit AVID Open Access to learn more.

Transcript

Paul Beckermann 0:01 Welcome to Tech Talk for teachers. I'm your host, Paul Beckermann.

Transition Music with Rena's Children 0:05 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 0:16 The topic of today's episode is 12 tech-infused holiday activities.

Paul Beckermann 0:22 December is packed with holidays and reasons to celebrate. There's the winter solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, the first snow that stays on the ground, New Year's. And for students who don't celebrate any of these, there's usually a winter break from school. Students always find that a reason to celebrate.

With so much going on, student energy is usually amped up, and teachers are looking for ways to harness that energy and channel it in productive ways. Sometimes this means finding seasonal connections to curricular materials. Other times it means coming up with enrichment or celebratory activities that channel student excitement in ways that foster transferable skills like creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration.

In today's episode, I'm going to share 12 tech-infused holiday activities that you can integrate into your December classroom. Let's count it, let's count it. Let's count it down. All right, here we go. Number one: countdown calendars.

Kids love counting down to holiday break. You could use Slides, Wakelet, or Padlet to build your countdown calendar. To make it more engaging, each countdown day could have a trivia or review question or community-building activity integrated into it.

Number two: digital kindness projects. There's never a bad time to spread joy, thanks, and kindness amongst the students in your classroom and the people in their lives. You can have students create e-cards, digital storybooks, or messages using Canva templates, and they can share these with classmates, families, or others in the school. The messages can be used to build up positivity, self-image, and community.

Number three: Jigsaw traditions. Since there are so many traditions to honor during this time of year, you could have each student select one to research and share back with the class, or they could each be assigned a global or national tradition. They could even share personal family traditions.

Every student gets a voice in this activity, and multiple perspectives are represented.

Number four: virtual field trips or interactive maps. Tools like Google Maps are instantly accessible and engaging, and they can be used as a fun way to learn about the world. Students can be assigned locations and then tasked with researching winter weather in those places, or perhaps traditions or ways of life. You and your students can decide what makes the most sense.

Number five: story writing. Students can use simple word processing programs or add multimedia and use tools like Book Creator to write stories about their own experiences or those of others from around the world. Whenever feasible, it's nice to pick a focus that relates to your curricular objectives.

Number six: classroom mascot on a shelf. This is a spinoff of the "Elf on the Shelf" idea. Instead of hiding an elf, you can create your own classroom mascot and then hide that each day in your classroom.

This creation could appear both physically in your actual classroom or even virtually in your LMS. If you post it in your online classroom, it can become a virtual scavenger hunt that gets students more familiar with your digital learning spaces. It's fun, and they learn what's available to them. Win-win.

Number seven: digital escape rooms. You can use Google Forms to create themed escape challenges tied to content review. Matt Miller from Ditch That Textbook has a library of free online digital escape rooms. You can use these; they can be really fun and engaging. You can even take it to the next level and have students create their own.

Number eight: Hour of Code. Why not celebrate an Hour of Code with a December theme? You can look for a winter-related Hour of Code activity from Code.org or perhaps have your students code "catch the snowflake" or holiday maze games using Scratch or MakeCode Arcade.

Number nine: student-created winter podcasts or newscasts.

This is a great way to get students creating while also recapping what you've done as a class so far this year, and it's a nice way to celebrate your student successes in the process. The finished shows can be shared with families, other classrooms, or even broadcast on school channels. Adobe Podcast or your favorite video production tools are great options for creation here.

Number 10: Twelve tech tools of December challenge. You can use December as a way to introduce new tech tools to your students and get them creating each day. Introduce a new tool or extension to explore and encourage your students to think creatively before break. Again, you can tie the activities to your curricular objectives where they fit.

Number 11: digital portfolio showcase. December can be a great time to recap learning for the first half of the school year. Have your students look through their work and pick their best examples to include in an end-of-semester portfolio.

Those can be built using website tools like Google Sites, put into a digital book, or even a simple digital slideshow. Students can display growth, achievement, and goals through these types of activities.

And number 12: holiday song vocabulary challenge. This last one is one that I used to use with my high school students. I'd give them a list of song titles written out using big, complicated, $10,000 vocabulary words, and then have them try to figure out what the actual titles were.

Here are a couple examples. I might give them: "Witness the ebullient juvenile with a cranium of crystallized precipitation," and they would have to come up with "Frosty the Snowman." Or I'd give them: "The process of ambulation through frozen atmospheric condensate," or "Walking in a Winter Wonderland."

To come up with these, you can give AI the simple titles and then have it generate the complicated ones. Choose holiday songs or just simple, well-known ones. It's up to you.

And then have students try to figure them out while stretching their own vocabulary skills. Advanced students who finish early can write their own.

So there you have it: 12 seasonal classroom activities to soak up some of that classroom energy and keep your students engaged. Whenever coming up with these types of activities, I do try to find a curricular connection whenever possible. I think of them as academic enrichment opportunities that also reinforce the learning goals for my classroom. At the very least, there are great ways to build a positive classroom community while also encouraging students to develop the four Cs: creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration.

And if students learn a new tech tool along the way as well, that's an added bonus. To learn more about today's topic and explore other free resources,

Paul Beckermann 0:22 (Continuing from and, timestamp for end section is same as start of but covers the wrap-up) visit AVIDOpenAccess.org. Specifically, I encourage you to check out the article collection, "AI in the K-12 Classroom," and, of course, be sure to join Rena Winston and me every Wednesday for our full-length podcast, Unpacking Education, where we're joined by exceptional guests and explore education topics that are important to you. Thanks for listening. Take care, and thanks for all you do. You make a difference.