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Darren Draper's blog post of first impressions of some of popular educational bloggers. Good Read!

"My iPad Pro arrived this past week to my excitement. I have used it for just a few days now at this point. There are absolutely no regrets about this large purchase (I joked that it did cost exactly half of what I paid for my first car!). I am thoroughly impressed by this device. The larger size of this iPad gives it a new device feeling, as opposed to just a refreshed model of the same dimensions. For a size reference, here is the iPad Pro side by side with the iPad 4: And here it is next to the iPad Mini:   I hope to do a series of posts outlining my use of the iPad Pro. This first post will just outline some initial thoughts on the device, and who I think it is best suited for. Readers of this blog will know that I'm a huge supporter of using iPads for content creation as opposed to just content consumption. The iPad Pro, along with the new features of iOS 9, bring with it many more possibilities of doing so."

"Care. Think. Design. Act. These words are the first thing that people see when entering Digital Shop, our middle school makerspace. This mantra anchors the threshold experience, a visitor's first visual impression of the space. But what do the words really mean, individually and collectively? Why those words, in that order? And how do they resonate with our learners and with my colleagues in regard to their impressions of the program?"

"NASA recently occupied the headlines, not for a shuttle launch or moon walk, but for successfully crowdsourcing a test of the Robonaut 2, a robotic astronaut assistant. NASA was so impressed with the quality of the 3D modeling submitted by the community that the agency has already organized two more challenges - and it's only the latest group to jump on the crowdsourcing bandwagon. It's time for higher education to be next. Of the few pioneer universities that have applied a crowdsourcing - or in this case, studentsourcing - model at their institution, all have experienced impressive results."

So with the caveat that I am only halfway through Mark Bauerline's book The Dumbest Generation, I have some early impressions to throw out there. While I think there is some merit to this side of the debate (much like Keen's Cult of the Amateur) what really bothers me about this book so far is, as the title suggests, this sense that our kids are at fault. Let me put it plainly: our kids are not "dumb" nor is this generation "dumb" simply because they spend a lot of time in front of television screens and computers or because they haven't worked out for themselves how to get smarter using the Read/Write Web.

A Non-Fungible Token, or NFT, is a type of account that makes a digital impression of any unique asset. Paintings, images, films, music, gifs - in short, anything that claims to be unique in some way - can all be included. They are highly valued by collectors, gamers, and art enthusiasts, and are purchased and sold at auctions.

A Non-Fungible Token, or NFT, is a type of account that makes a digital impression of any unique asset. Paintings, images, films, music, gifs - in short, anything that claims to be unique in some way - can all be included. They are highly valued by collectors, gamers, and art enthusiasts, and are purchased and sold at auctions.

"Last year I volunteered in my child's Kindergarten class daily for an hour with our family's three iPads. I learned a lot about selecting educational content (primarily early math & literacy apps) and how to set up an environment most conducive for learning. I was most impressed by the potential for mobile devices to improve the experience in class for both teachers and students. So this year I volunteered to bring our iPads into my child's First grade class once a week for 'buddy reading'. As I do more outreach and training for local teachers in my community, I am surprised at the large number of classrooms getting devices without any guidelines about how to integrate them into their existing institutional structures or curriculum. From these experiences, I have come up with the following five tips for starting a new program in any classroom …"

"This may sound like a lofty title, but it's not wrong. There's an impressive presentation making the rounds dubbed "Mobile is eating the World" by Benedict Evans. In the presentation, Evans shows some staggering charts, interesting factoids, and all the other statistics you'd expect with a title so grand. It makes me think about mobile learning, mobile browsing, and mobile everything. But the real story here is about education. It's about how we're all going to be learning in the next few years and generations according to the data in the presentation below. Mobile learning is not only on the rise, it's inevitable."

"One of this week's highlighted app collections in the iPad App Store is 'Apps for the Great Outdoors'. In fact, it's a carryover from last week and it's quite an impressive collection."

"I'm continually impressed and amazed at how much impact the iPad is having in education - and especially in helping students with autism or on the autism spectrum. So I'm delighted to share this guest post today, covering 10 great iPad apps (and one great iPad case) for Students on the Autism Spectrum. "

"ArtSet was an impressive app that I was introduced to last week. I was presenting at a conference and one of the organisers asked if a number of the presenters could go through a workflow to illustrate how a series of apps might be able to be used to deepen student learning. The idea was the the product of one app would become the input for the next. The story of The Lion and the Mouse was suggested as an idea. Each presenter was given three minutes only. There was a cross section of both primary and secondary teachers in the group."

"Narrable is a neat service for creating short narrated slideshows. Wes Fryer wrote a glowing review of Narrable and when Wes gives a service high marks I know that I have to try it out. My initial impression of Narrable is that it is kind of like VoiceThread mashed with Animoto."

"To some people, Finland isn't a whole lot more than a chilly, northern country boasting a population of around 5 million people. Whether you've been to Finland or not, you probably haven't had the chance to take an up-close and personal look at one of Finland's greatest accomplishments to date - its high-achieving education system. Students in Finland have, over the past several years, risen to the top of the academic food-chain, and they've become some of the top scholarly performers in the world. Compared to many other developed nations, including the US and Canada, Finland's high school graduation rates have continued to grow steadily and impressively. Furthermore, a huge percentage of students continue on to earn college degrees, and students at all levels perform exceedingly well on standardized tests."

"If you use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or Google+ then you need this. Simple as that. These are some awesome time-saving social media shortcuts for all the major social networks. You might just impress yourself with how much of a social media maverick (is there a feminine version of maverick? Mavericka?) from here on out. This visual guide from Quintly details the many ways to save time on social media. There's even a few Easter eggs in there about how to play 'Snake' on YouTube which I find quite funny."

"Pod touches are making a difference in Oregon. The Canby School District completed a pilot last year and those behind the program are generous about sharing what they've learned. I've been reading the school district's wiki for some time, and a recent article written about their pilot on O'Reilly Radar is impressive."

"When it comes to building math mastery, it's easy to find app focused on math fluency; app stores are overflowing with them. But teachers looking for tools that build conceptual understanding are often left wanting. These tools can be tough to find. But not anymore. Below are 10 apps I use with my students. These apps let students practice number concepts such as one-to-one correspondence, regrouping, and even multiplication and division in developmentally appropriate ways. Many times these are more effective than physical manipulatives. Digital manipulatives can be broken apart, put back together and moved around in ways that are not possible with bags full of Base 10 Blocks and counters.  The "aha" moments captured with these apps make lasting impressions on a child's mind, building a strong mathematical basis.  Even better, teachers who have access to only one device can take advantage of these apps by using an Apple TV or reflecting software."

Wizer is a fantastic free tool for creating simple digital worksheets that enable learners and teachers to do some pretty complex things. When I first discovered the tool a few months back I was really impressed by how easy it was to create really engaging blended learning content for class or homework, so it's great to be able to publish this Q & A with Nira Mayorchik Sheleg the Co-founder & CEO.

"Smartphone controlled toys are the new cool tech toys that everyone wants. Remote controlled toys are cool, but app remote controlled toys are in another league. These toys are really impressive not just to kids but even to parents, and most families these days have an iPad or Android tablet or access to downloaded apps through their smartphones. Developers are fostering the latest craze by connecting toys to smart technology and letting kids use their mobiles as controllers. Here are the 10 coolest app remote controlled toys available today that parents and kids will have so much fun with."

"Being able to create your own robot gives students and kids a great sense of achievement, with the added bonus of allowing children to develop patience, imagination and problems solving skills. There are a number of impressive kids robotics kits on the market that even parents will enjoy playing with. Plus, these types of projects provide valuable bonding time for kids and parents as it's a toy that both can really relish. In classrooms, robotics are perfect for teaching coding to kids, there are many programmable robot kits that use a simple drag and drop programing language based on Scratch. Making your own robot is also a creative a process, where kids and students utilize their design skills to come up with interesting robot designs. The 10 best make your own robot kits for kids on the market are listed below."