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The goal of Natural Math is to collect, distribute and create such natural experiences of mathematics. We need to work with families to support them as units of larger communities of practice. We need to participate and engage babies and kids in math-rich, meaningful human endeavors that are useful, beautiful and fun. From the earliest time, kids should see themselves as co-creators of mathematics. Finally, the richness of the mathematical culture has to become available and accessible, beyond ivory towers of specialists and lairs of geeks "The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed." All the pieces of the natural math puzzle already exist in various "math oases" where families, subcultures, online communities and other groups of people engage with mathematics in ways that are natural for humans. We can put the puzzle together by networking: identifying activities that support natural math, supporting families and communities in finding and developing such activities, and loving one another in the context of mathematics.

"Last week while talking to our youngest son,( a Surveying Engineer working on surveying a gas line on the east coast), he was telling me how he purchased an ipad for his personal use, then when he began "playing around" with it, something changed and finally, he was excited that this was going to end up being a tool he could use at work."

"Building lesson plans is an integral part of every teacher's day. Integrating technology into lessons (that may have previously existed in a totally non-technology infused version) can sometimes be difficult, especially if the task at hand can be easily completed without technology - many of us wonder why bother if we don't have to. While there are tons of lesson planning sites online that offer either templates or ready made lesson plans for a fee, tailoring the lesson plans to your particular material and students is usually the best option. The handy infographic below takes a look at the lesson planning process broken down into a simple, four step process. Think of it as having four different buckets of building blocks, and you can choose one item from each bucket to piece together your final product. You could potentially use this to make a rubric style lesson planner for yourself - if you were feeling ambitious!"

"Periodically, I find it interesting to see what's new over at TED Talks. While not every video they have really floats my boat, there is generally a wealth of inspiration and interesting stories shared there. We've shared a number of these inspiring talks in the past - some relate specifically to teaching, others cover more general life lessons or inspiration. So it is finally May, and even the coldest of climates are emerging out of winter into spring by now, we're sharing a few more great videos to put some spring in your step. Check them out and enjoy!"

Report will be released in June

"For our last day of class with a "normal" schedule (today), I met with my students in our school's 21st-century learning space. There's a sampling of flexible furniture, a corner with stadium seating, iMacs, a big-screen TV, an Apple TV, tables that also serve as white boards… chairs on wheels, couches with charging stations… it's a great space! Screen Shot 2014-05-27 at 6.32.43 PM Students' first task today was to finalize their multi-touch math books and submit them to me. Since some student groups were able to virtually turn in their books last Friday, I was able to embed their .ePub files on my teacher website, and use each unique URL to share all of the books in a ThingLink. Student groups downloaded and read no less than five books authored by their peers."

"MS Office was finally made available for the iPad this past week. This is a long-awaited release, almost four years after the release of Apple's tablet. While the apps are all free to download, you are only able to view documents, and will need to pay a rather large subscription fee of $99 every year to be able to use it. Granted, this subscription does include the latest versions Microsoft Office for your home PCs as well. "

"This web site is designed to foster visual creativity by making stories out of photos. It is based completely on the Five Card Nancy game devised by comics guru Scott McCloud and the nifty web version at 741.5 Comics. However, rather than using randomly chosen panels of the old Nancy comic, my version draws upon collections of photos specified by a tag in flickr. You are dealt five random photos for each draw, and your task is to select one each time to add to your building set of images, that taken together as a final set of 5 - tell a story in pictures. When you are done, you can add a title and explanation, and save the story. You can easily put a link in your resume or send to your Mom (she may print it out and tape it to the fridge, or she may criticize your creativity, your mileage and mom may vary). Plus we offer the ability to tweet your story or use an embed code to add it to your own web site."

"2015 is the year the focus will finally turn the corner by organizations in education and the business world to get it right: it is about the learner. It is not about calling it "Personalized Instruction" or "Personalized Education." It is not about the technology, the curriculum, or instruction. It is about the learner making learning personal for his or herself. It is about teacher and learner roles changing. It is about calling students "learners." It is about transforming the system because now is the time to change the system. The current system is broken. It isn't working for most of our learners. The current system of content delivery and focusing on performance instead of learning is not making positive changes for our children and their future. So we put together four large concepts that encompass the 10 trends that you will see impacting learning starting this coming year: Learning Culture, Learning Environments, Deeper Learning, and Partnerships in Learning."

"The iMovie app could possibly be my favorite app on my iPad.  It's a versatile app that can lead to a whole lot of creation in your classroom  Yes, I know that iMovie on my MacBook Pro has all the bells and whistles, but I believe that the app has all the ingredients to make some pretty powerful products in your classroom. I love the fact that the app allows our students (and us) to make thinking visible.   There are so many ways that you can use iMove in the classroom.  From knowledge to comprehension, every level of Bloom's taxonomy is easily addressed using the iMovie app.  I plan on teaching our K-5 students how to use the iMovie app in the coming weeks and I can't wait to see the creativity that is generated! The best thing about iMovie is that you can use it with a lot of other apps! App Smashing?  Try using iMovie as the final app to display your app smash.  Just drop your products in from the photo library, do a voice over and you have created a product that allows you to showcase the learning happening in your classroom! I have created a folder on my iPad of apps that I use to supplement some of the videos that I produce. Here are some of my favorites:"

"App smashing, the process of using more than one apps in conjunction with one another to create a final product, is a concept that allows students to create engaging educational projects and illustrate their creativity in multifaceted ways. One of the most gratifying and effective ways to use app smashing in the classroom is to create digital storytelling projects. The concept of digital storytelling is emerging as a form of personal and collective expression of knowledge, ideas, and perceptions. Its numerous and positive effects on students' communication skills are well documented. Digital storytelling is the perfect vehicle for the delivery of visual and audio stimuli that greatly enhance a storyline or a simple narrative."

"It's becoming difficult to read the news in Los Angeles these days without running across yet another article about the problems faced by the sputtering LAUSD iPad initiative. Finally, LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy announced this week that they were suspending the contracts with Apple and Pearson amid increasing scrutiny and investigation of the bidding process. According to Deasy, "it will also give us time to take into account concerns raised surrounding the project". There were always valid questions surrounding a bidding process that granted enormous contracts for digital courses that had not yet been developed. It's unfortunate however that an investigation into the bidding process became the catalyst for the project's suspension when it was the planning and implementation that fell woefully short in so many areas. Hindsight may be 20-20 but many were already pointing out substantial flaws in the plan at its initial announcement. As educators we know that failure is the breeding ground for learning and adapting. With that in mind, here are 5 lessons that can be drawn from the LAUSD iPad experience."

"The new Canva for Education site features eighteen lesson plans written by Vicki Davis, Steven Anderson, Terri Eichholz, and Paul Hamilton. The lesson plans include things like Paul's making historical infographics in which students summarize and visually represent the connections between historical events and their causes. For the elementary school crowd Terri has a lesson called Initial Selfies in which students learn to isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds. One of Steven's lesson plans calls for students to build graphics about percentages. And to take advantage of students' familiarity with Facebook, Vicki has built a lesson plan in which students build historical figure fan pages."

"by Grant Wiggins, Ed.D, Authentic Education This post is a follow-up to our recent post, Students Learn Best When You Do This. Now, in my final post from students at a typical US High School, I end on an upbeat note: what students say is the best assignment they have had this year. Again, I picked the first 47 answers at random. (Ed note: 2-numbers 28 and 40-were brutally honest, yes?)"

"Tim, a Director of Instructional Technology from El Paso, Texas, gives a strong account of how iPad can be used as a tool for creation. He clearly details some of the concrete ways that the often-defended tablet can be used to produce videos, music, drawings, and works of art that move well beyond consumption. Kim, on the other hand, offers a unique perspective as an educator who has recently transitioned from supporting an iPad environment to using a Chromebook as his primary device. In his post, 3 Reasons Why Chromebook Beats iPad in 1:1 Programs, Kim gives the following three reasons for the superiority of the Chromebook: Chromebooks are for creating, and iPads are for consuming The App vs the Web The Google Ecosystem for Collaboration The most viable of these three reasons from Kim is the final one, the collaborative tools that are inherent in the Google ecosystem can be accessed seamlessly on a Chromebook. While iOS device access to Google tools continues to become less and less of an issue, schools that want to focus primarily on Google tools should look no further than Chromebooks. However, I would like to challenge Kim's first two points. As he notes in his discussion around his first point, the consumption versus creation debate with iPads and Chromebooks has been made countless times by those on both sides of this discussion."

"Good news! Explain Everything is finally available on the iPhone.  After tinkering with it a little bit on my iPhone I found it really amazing. It syncs seamlessly with iPad version and provides almost the same features you will find on iPad."