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 75,000 citations of his research, he is ranked among the top 2% of scientists worldwide (#91 in social science) and ranked #44 (#5 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 Classroom and Beyond: Teacher Education in a GenAI World
Danah Henriksen and I have a chapter in the Third International Handbook of Educational Change (2026), edited by A. Lin Goodwin, Andy Hargreaves, Victoria Showunmi, Corrie Stone-Johnson, and Jennie Weiner. In our chapter, "The Classroom and Beyond: Teacher Education...
27 Windows on the Universe (07): The Ecosystem
This is the seventh in a series about the human side of science, drawn from interviews with 27 cosmologists. T Earlier posts explored, how this project started, the method, the role of wonder and beauty, the craft, how scientists think, and what keeps them going and...
27 Windows on the Universe (06): The Drive
This is the sixth in a series about the human side of science, drawn from interviews with 27 cosmologists. Earlier posts explored, how this project started, the method, the role of wonder and beauty, the craft and how scientists think. This one is about what keeps...
Look What You Made Me Do: The Dawkins Saga, Part II
A week or so ago I wrote a letter to Richard Dawkins — part tribute, part diagnosis — about his now-famous two-day conversation with Claude (or rather, "Claudia"), in which one of our most celebrated skeptics concluded that the chatbot might well be conscious. The...
A Transatlantic Keynote (No Travel Required)
Earlier this year, the University of Glasgow held its first International Symposium on AI in Education, organized by the School of Education and the Centre for Teaching Excellence. I was invited to give the keynote. The catch: I was in Arizona. Mark Peart, Gabriella...
Three Questions on Questions: On Asking, Knowing and Noticing
Note: This post is a followup to a piece I had written earlier. You can find that post Why Sal Khan’t: On Learning by Making but Teaching by Telling. This post was also cross-posted on the Civics of Technology blog. "Students aren't great at asking questions well."...
From Spectator to Specimen: When Parasocial Media Becomes Parasocial AI
Facebook!!! How it has changed over the years. I remember the time when it was a space to connect with friends and family, get their updates and more. It was a bit performative, for sure, but it still felt like a space worth visiting once in a while, to check in. All...
This View of Life: A Letter to Richard Dawkins
Note: Richard Dawkins made the news recently with an essay describing his two-day conversation with Claude, the AI chatbot from Anthropic, ending in the conclusion that Claude must be conscious. There have been many responses; this is mine — partly about that...
Banning what won’t go away: A new AIR|GPT episode
Tech bans, and calls for more of them, are in the air. The Los Angeles Unified School District just banned screens. Australia banned social media for everybody under 16 years of age. Other districts and states are following, or weighing whether to do so or not. That...
… or check out some random blog posts
TPACK @ PLP: cool webinars, great resource
Leigh Wolf pointed me to an fantastic resource for teachers and educators interested in learning more about TPACK. These are a series of online interactive webinars titled TPACK Fridays and are organized by the Powerful Learning Practice (plpnetwork.com). What is...
Educational Futures Thinking: New book chapter
The philosopher George Santayana (1910) famously stated, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (p. 284). In other words, the “best” way to prepare for the future is to study the past and through that, identify patterns and trends, and then...
The font of truth i.e. the beauty of Baskerville
I have been a great fan of Baskerville, the font for a long time. I love the manner it looks on a page and most importantly I love its italic ampersand! Check it out below... isn't that beautiful. I remember setting my doctoral dissertation in Baskerville and...
TPACK in context: Call for papers
Technology integration in teaching is deeply rooted in specific contexts. One could argue that contextual knowledge is of critical importance to teachers and the absence of it would limit, in significant ways, their effectiveness and success as an educators seeking to...
The TPACK game, Littleton version
I received an email from Michael Porter of the Littleton Public Schools in Colorado about a version of the TPACK game Michael and his colleagues recently conducted with their K-12 Leadership team (building principals and district administrators). I know that Matt...
Ganesh, new ambigram, & old video
One of the big parts of my life over the past decade or more, has been the Ganesh Festival celebrations in Lansing with friends and family—Good food and good times. Of course this year I have to miss all the fun - being here in Phoenix. I have kept up with all...
Banning what won’t go away: A new AIR|GPT episode
Tech bans, and calls for more of them, are in the air. The Los Angeles Unified School District just banned screens. Australia banned social media for everybody under 16 years of age. Other districts and states are following, or weighing whether to do so or not. That...
Wine + GPT4 + Code Interpreter: WOW!!
OpenAI just released Code Interpreter. It allows you to execute Python code within a live working environment. One of the things that it allows us to do is take data files and conduct data analysis and create graphs and charts. Not knowing what that meant I decided to...
Friday the 13th
A design for Friday the 13th (shamelessly building on an original idea from Nikita Prokhorov) Enjoy.