Punya Mishra is Director of Innovative Learning Futures at the Learning Engineering Institute (LEI) and Professor in the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching & Learning Innovation at Arizona State University (with an affiliate appointment in the Design School).
He is internationally recognized for his work in educational technology; the role of creativity and aesthetics in learning; and the application of collaborative, design-based approaches to educational innovation. He has received over $11 million in grants; published over 200 articles and edited 5 books. A recipient of AECT’s David H. Jonassen Excellence in Research Award, with over 67,000 citations of his research, he is ranked among the top 2% of scientists worldwide (#91 in social science) and ranked #62 (#11 in psychology) among educational scholars with the biggest influence on educational practice and policy.
Punya has extensive leadership experience in higher education, having previously served as Associate Dean of Scholarship & Innovation (at MLFTC), where he led a range of initiatives that provided a future-forward, equity driven, approach to inter/trans-disciplinary educational research. He has also served as director of doctoral programs (at MLFTC) and the award-winning Master of Arts in Educational Technology program (at Michigan State). He currently is a member of the steering committee of ASU’s Leadership Academy, AACTE’s Technology and Innovation Committee, and editor-in-residence for the Journal of Teacher Education.
An AERA Fellow (2024), TED-Ed educator (2023), he co-hosts the award-winning Silver Lining for Learning webinar as well as the Learning Futures podcast. He is an award-winning instructor, an engaging public speaker, and an accomplished visual artist and poet.
Must reads
Webinars & Podcasts:
Value Laden (archived)
Apple | Spotify | Simplecast
Blog Posts
The Rorschach Test of AI Research: New Episode of AIR | GPT
Two recent studies about AI and education have been receiving enormous attention—MIT's "Your Brain on ChatGPT" and the World Bank's "Chalkboards to Chatbots." Initially, I wanted to write a detailed post dissecting both studies, but I held back for two reasons: first,...
Drawing with Circles: Vibe coding the Fourier Transformation
In my presentations I sometimes talk about my four years in engineering school as being something of a disaster. The way I present this fact is through this image, and the math/science types get the pun - Four Year / Fourier Transformation! A slide I typically use in...
Six Principles for Educational Technology Implementation: ?A Global Perspective
A few months ago, the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation at Arizona State University hosted the 2025 Yidan Prize Conference. This conference was both a celebration of my colleague Micky Chi’s receipt of the 2023 Yidan Prize for Education...
Making Waves (& Flocking Birds): Creating Science Simulations with AI
I've been experimenting with AI-assisted coding for a while now—in fact my first attempt was back in early 2023. Since then I have engaged in multiple explorations using AI to transform concepts and intuitions directly into functional code. This approach bypasses...
Small pieces, meaningful connections: Why I love the open web
One of blogging's greatest pleasures, often unspoken, are the truly serendipitous connections one makes. Not networking in the conventional sense, but unexpected encounters with people who find something on my website that connects with them and they reach out. These...
Large Language Models: A Postmodern Nightmare (built by Silicon Valley)
I am a huge fan of Arthur Brooks' regular columns in The Atlantic where he writes about meaning, love, and happiness, with twin goals, "to understand these parts of life more deeply, and impart to others whatever understanding I can glean." I appreciate his insights...
Reflecting on a Semester of Discovery, Creativity and GenAI
This past spring semester I taught (with Nicole Oster and Lindsey McCaleb) a masters/doctoral seminar on Human Creativity x AI in Education. I had wanted to write this post after our last class meeting over a month and a half ago—but travel and life kept getting in...
The Stranger Who Changed My Life: A tribute to Bill Atkinson
Bill Atkinson was someone I had never met. But he changed my life. I learned of Bill's passing a couple of days ago. It was not that I had thought about Bill a lot but the news of his death brought back memories and a recognition of the critical role he had played in...
Guardrails, Guidelines, & Good Intentions + Teaching Creativity in the age of GenAI
I continue to co-host AIR | GPT, a podcast that brings together Caroline Fell Kurban, Liz Kolb, Ruben Puentedura, Helen Crompton, and myself for monthly conversations about AI and education. Our discussions are orchestrated by Emmy Award-winning executive producer...
… or check out some random blog posts
MLK
Martin Luther King, Jr. January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968 Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted —in Strength to Love, 1964
Ambigrams animated: 3 new designs
I love creating ambigrams, words written in such a manner that they can be read from multiple perspective - rotated, reflected and so on. These designs are much easier to "grasp" when printed on paper since you can actually turn the paper around, hold it against a...
Silver Lining for Learning as a driver of Innovation
We recently celebrated 100 episodes of Silver Lining for Learning (see the 100th episode or read my blog post about the journey). In this process we have had an opportunity to speak with some amazing people – educational leaders, innovators, administrators, deans,...
Paradoxes & Ambigrams: Article 2 of 2
A few months ago I had posted about publication of the first of two articles on mathematics, visual wordplay and paradoxes. The second article (part of our series on Art and Math co-authored with my friend Gaurav Bhatnagar and published by At Right Angles) is now...
Yet another periodic table…
The ongoing saga of mis-representing the periodic table for any darned list of objects continues... Here is a new one sent in by my friend and colleague Patrick Dickson: A periodic table of Typefaces. Now I won't beat a dead horse here, (Nashworld has a great posting...
TPACK & Philosophy
I often receive emails about the TPACK framework and even though I have not worked in that space for a while, I do feel obligated to respond. That said, I usually do not feel the need to document my responses. Once in a while, however, I get a question that demands a...
What is TPACK? Updated article
There are some articles that sink without a trace. There are others like our 2006 TCRecord article introducing the TPACK framework that continues to be cited... and then there are some that keep getting published over and over (albeit in an updated manner). Here is...
Distributed creativity
Re-Public: re•imagining democracy, an online journal focusing on innovative developments in contemporary political theory and practice, has a special issue devoted to Distributed Creativity and Design. This may be a useful resource for my Learning technology by design...
The Avengers, Creativity & the EdTech Midgame
If last week we had Bollywood, could Hollywood be far behind? Here is the fourth blog post from students in my class on Human Creativity x AI in Education, documenting what we do each week. The only edit I made to their post was including the image and description of...