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 63,000 citations of his research, he is ranked among the top 2% of scientists worldwide (#101 in education) and the top 50 scholars (top 10 in psychology) who have the biggest influence on educational practice and policy in the US.
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
Turing’s Tricksters: How AI Hijacks Our Social Instincts
In a recent article in The Atlantic (Shh, ChatGPT. That’s a Secret), Lila Shroff delves into the surprising willingness of people to share intimate details with AI chatbots. To be clear, this did not come as a surprise. Readers of this blog will know this is something...
From ChatGPT to Chats Devroop: Ed Tech & Time Travel in South Africa
This past week I was in Durban, South Africa presenting at the Innovations in the Science of the Teaching and Learning (ISOTL) Conference 2024: Bridging Ethics, Equity, and Innovation in Higher Education, organized by the University of KwaZulu-Natal. It was a pretty...
Digital Shadows: AI Scripts a Different Curriculum
As we continue to grapple with the hype and transformative potential of generative AI in education, I find myself revisiting a point I've made before: the most significant impacts of this technology may not be within the classroom walls, but in the world that...
Unlocking Creativity: Dr. Anna Abraham on Interdisciplinarity, AI, and Human Innovation
The advent, adoption and rapid evolution of generative AI has raised many questions about how we think about creativity (human and machine), and its impact on learning. As part of our ongoing series in TechTrends, my colleagues and I have been exploring these issues...
Tech integration models and GenAI: Podcast episode (Part I)
I was recently invited to be a guest on the Superspeaks | Microsoft EDU podcast on the BAM Radio Network. the topic at hand were technology integration frameworks in the age of Generative AI. I was joined by a literal who's who of educational technology scholars, all...
AI Literacy: The Ethical Overreach?
A few weeks ago, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek blog post about the need for "Pencil Literacy," defined as "A Framework for the ethical, equitable & meaningful integration of transformative graphite technology." While that post was entertaining to write, it didn't...
Advancing Education in the AI Era: Video Update
I was recently in Washington, DC, for a panel discussion titled "Advancing Education in the AI Era: Promises, Pitfalls, and Policy Strategies" organized by the Center for AI Policy. The panel, moderated by Jason Green-Lowe of the CAIP, also included Michael Brickman,...
Beavers, Brains & Chat Bots: Cognitive Illusions in the Age of AI
Imagine a world where tape recorders fool beavers, triangles tell stories, and AI convinces us it's sentient. Welcome to reality—where our cognitive biases are colliding with technology in ways we're only beginning to understand. In this post, I focus on our tendency...
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...
… or check out some random blog posts
The pleasures of being a teacher
Yesterday, as I was watching the second presidential debate, and following various bloggers who were live-blogging the event, I took a moment to check my email. I found that I had received a note from a former student. This individual had been in my summer cohort last...
Rethinking Ed Tech Research…
I have been a huge fan of Don Norman ever since I first ran into his book on the Psychology of Everyday Things (which he later renamed as The Design of Everyday Things, and the story behind that name change is worth reading as an excellent example of design). Don...
GenAI 2023: Year in Review
A week or so ago I was joined by friends Sean Leahy, Rachna Mathur and Kellie Kreiser on the Learning Futures Podcast. The topic: looking back on a crazy, dynamic, transformative year of generative AI. As is to be expected, we covered a lot of ground in the...
Multi-national TPACK tour
I leave tomorrow (actually today, given that it is past midnight as I write this) on a multi-national TPACK tour. I touch 4 countries in around 2 weeks!! I am taking a non-stop flight from Newark NJ to New Delhi, for the first time ever. It is a 15 hour flight and I...
Alien games paper, published
I had posted earlier that a paper on gender and video games had been accepted for publication. Well, it is published now, full reference, abstract and link to PDF given below. Heeter, C., Egidio, R., Mishra, P., Winn, B., & Winn, J. (2008). Alien Games: Do girls...
Design is for life
Quote for the day: Parents look at their children today when they are 3 years old and say "Oh god!, He doesn't know how to operate the computer! How is he going to go ahead like this?" They should instead be worried if their child doesn’t know design. They should say,...
Perfect Vacuum (OR who wrote this poem?)
I was cleaning out my drafts folder and came across this poem. I liked it. A lot. It has my sensibility. My sense of whimsy. But I DO NOT remember writing it. Nor do I remember finding it somewhere and copying it into an email. There is no author attributed - which...
Happy 2009, a stop motion movie
Soham, Shreya and I spent this afternoon making a stop-motion animation new year's card. Check it out... http://www.youtube.com/embed/7kw_icNKI44 Have a great 2009!
A pome a day
Greg Casperson is a graduate student in our Ed Psy & Ed Tech program. He has been engaged, over the past few months, in the most interesting experiment. He carefully selects and posts to his website one poem every day! Greg's RSS feed has become one of the first...