This week I am in Cape Cod with my wife's family, including our two toddler nieces.  They have enjoyed playing with my iPad (supervised of course) and I have enjoyed seeing which apps they like interacting with the most.  Here are two they have liked so far:

iWriteWords (Free)
I wrote about this app that I learned about from Seth Bowers.  My 2 1/2 year old niece really enjoyed tracing and identifying the letters.  The only part she needed help (i.e. she didn't understand it) with was tilting the iPad so that the letter blocks fall into the "vortex."

3D Drum Kit for iPad ($2.99)
I got a couple of iTunes gift cards for my birthday, so I have been purchasing more apps than I normally might.  The ones that I have been most interested in are the musical instrument and production applications.  Both my 2 1/ year old and 20 month old nieces have liked smashing this drum kit.  It has an easy to use recording interface and a couple of different drum kit sounds.  The drum kit is animated, unlike other drum kit or drum pad apps that just play the sounds.

You can use a Google custom search engine (CSE) to only search within specific websites.  This might be especially helpful to educators who have a library of resources for a topic, curriculum unit, or even an entire school year.  All you need is a Google account and then you can go to this page to get started.

Once you've done the initial setup, you can add more sites to the search engine and add keywords to the search to help refine the results.  I've been trying to learn more about how Google AdSense works.  I set up a search page on this site that uses a custom search engine based on keywords.  Apparently if people actually click on results from a search done there I will generate revenue.  We'll see about that!

I can really see this being used by langauge, history, and social studies teachers who have tried to find dynamic ways to link and share the abundant resources available on the web to them. By using this tool you can teach students how to filter information while still guiding them towards quality materials.