Punya Mishra is Director of Innovative Learning Futures at the Learning Engineering Institute (LEI) and Professor in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College 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. With over 60,000 citations of his research, he is ranked among the top 2% of scientists worldwide and the top 50 scholars (top 10 in psychology) who have the biggest influence on educational practice and policy in the United States.
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
creAItive teaching: Announcing a new course
I have been working for a while (with some amazing colleagues) on course on creative teaching with AI. This was publicly announced in a story in today’s MLFTC newsletter titled: GenAI as a creative K–12 learning partner For those who haven't had a chance to read the...
Education in the AI Era: Responses to a call for help
Recently, I had the privilege of participating in a panel discussion on "Advancing Education in the AI Era: Promises, Pitfalls, and Policy Strategies" hosted by the Center for AI Policy in Washington, D.C. The event, held in the hallowed (not a word I use lightly)...
S’more Problems: Generative AI, Marshmallows, and the Flattening of Culture
A few days ago, The Washington Post published a story that caught my eye. Titled: The Marshmallow Test and other predictors of success have bias built in, researchers say, the article discusses the famous Marshmallow Test, long heralded as a predictor of future...
Why ChatGPT Isn’t Your Next Teacher
There is a great deal of buzz about how generative AI (GenAI) can transform education—something I have been thinking about a lot as well. That said, I not so sure we're asking the right questions. Let's back up a second. Back in the early 90's I was a grad student at...
Teachers and genAI: Insights from an OECD Webinar
I recently had the privilege of participating in a webinar hosted by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) on the topic of "How teachers can use AI effectively." The session was described as follows Supporters of AI argue it has the...
ChatGPT for Teachers: Insights from Online Discussions
In our ongoing exploration of creativity, learning, and technology for the journal TechTrends, my co-authors and I have turned our attention to the fascinating intersection of generative AI and education. Our past interviews have featured innovators such as Chris...
Cybernetics or AI? What’s in a Name?
What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet—William Shakespeare We propose that a 2 month, 10 man (sic) study of artificial intelligence be carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New...
Pencil Literacy: A framework
I have been thinking of pencils lately. Pencils in the context of AI. What if pencils were the latest technological change to hit our world? How would we as educators respond? Would we worry about children using them ethically? What about cheating: erasing answers and...
Endless Sky: AI composes a song
A few years ago I wrote a poem titled “A cosmologist worries (about infinity)” inspired by a conversation with my friend and cosmologist, Tanmay Vachaspati. I remembered this poem recently when I was playing with Suno the generative AI song generator. So I wondered...
… or check out some random blog posts
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...
Video Bingo in Alabama: Tech & change
How does technology change what we do? Often when a new technology appears we tend to see it in terms of existing practices and structures. So an e-book is the same as a book, except in digital format. E-books still have "pages" which we "turn" (with a flick or our...
Website problems
My website has been facing all kinds of problems over the past few weeks. We have been working on figuring out what went wrong and trying to ensure that it doesn't recur - but it has taken a while and it's not clear to us whether we have it all figured out. So the...
Happy 2016, New Video
Since 2009, our family has been creating videos to welcome the new year. The videos are typically typographical in nature, sometimes including a visual illusion or some kind or the other. So as usual, we have a video for welcome 2016. Shot on our dining...
Photos from SITE08
Matt has Flickrd photos from SITE08. Some of these photos are taken by me, but the rules are that the owner of the camera automatically gets the bragging rights 🙂 and since I didn't take my camera along, he takes credit for all the pictures. Given that a bunch of...
The mysterious pentagon… explained?
Around 2 weeks ago I posted a note about a "pentagon" I saw in some boiling lentils in my kitchen. There have been some interesting responses to this... but before I get to that, here is the original image, if you missed the original posting: Interestingly enough, a...
The “O” in Obama
Steven Heller continues his series on political typography and branding with an interview with the design team that developed the now iconic symbol for the Obama campaign. Check out The "O" in Obama. Previous postings on this theme can be found here and here.
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...
Expert eyes on creativity
Since 2012, the Deep-Play Research Group has been publishing a series of articles under the broad rubric of Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21st Century in the journal Tech Trends. This has led to 33 articles (and counting) and...