I recently find a great educational app from Smithsonian – Smithsonian Channel. It has many of Smithsonian channel’s videos, some are full episodes, and they are free! It is available on almost all the different devices, iPhone, iPod, iPad, Android, Kindle. If you want to watch the videos on bigger screen, it is also available on their website, so you can watch the shows on your computer. I loved Smithsonian, and I simply can’t believe I can watch Smithsonian Channel for Free!
Once you open the app, you will see 3 choices: Watch Videos; Find A Show; and Create Your Channel.
Watch Videos:
You will see selections of videos organized in rows: Featured, Full Episodes, Most Popular, … followed by more specific topics, like 12 Things You Didn’t Know About New York, The History of Rock & Roll.
You can scroll left or right on each row to see all the videos in that topic. By looking at the length of each video you can tell if it is full episode or not. Of course, those under Full Episodes are always full episodes, and there are always 20 to 25 shows with full episodes.
There are quite few interesting topics there. Some I would definitely find time to watch are: What You Don’t Know About Our Presidents, Top 14 Places to visit in 2014, The Cutest Animals From Around The World.
Find a Show:
Here you can search for Smithsonian TV shows by categories – Featured, Air & Space, Culture, History, Kids, Science and Nature. I love Animal Winter Games under Kids. It was very interesting to watch animals compete with athletes. America’s Lost Submarine will be the next one I am going to watch.
Create Your Channel:
Here you can build a list of videos you want to watch based on your interest. You can pick a subject from the long list on the right side, and drag the subject to the middle of the screen. You will see random bubbles floating on the screen, and if you catch any one bubble, that bubble will zoom in and show the title of the show with showing time and video length. On the left top corner of the screen, you will be able to see the number of videos available under the selected subject. If you prefer to see the whole list of videos within the selected subjects, you can choose the lineup option.
If you have cable at home, you can use this app to find the Smithsonian channel number at your location.
iGameMom Comments:
I like the free full episodes. There are always a rotating selection of 20-25 shows are available for free.
I also like the selections by subjects, especially you can create your own channel based on your own interest. Although most videos are short clips, it is still neat to watch several short clips that are all about the same subject. This could be a great resource for school projects or teaching materials.
The user interface is very intuitive and runs smoothly. The design is elegant and classy. The only drawback is it requires Wifi to function properly.
Smithsonian Channel is available on iPhone, iPod, and iPad. It is also available for Android on Google Play and Amazon App Store.
To access the free videos from your computer, you can visit Smithsonian website for direct access to the free full episodes on your computer.
If you would like to check it out or purchase it, please use the App Store link provided below. The cost is the same to you, but iGameMom gets a small percentage. Thanks for your support! Note: The link works for all countries.