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 Edge Cases Are Endless: Google’s Digital Plastic and other Curriculum-Shaped Objects
In a previous blog post (The Mirror and the Machine: Navigating the Metaphors of Gen AI) I had written the following about metaphors and AI: Metaphors are essential – they are the cognitive bridges that allow us to understand new and complex concepts by relating them...
Kant, Borges, & AI go to Bollywood: Connections Nobody Asked For
Intro: I am not entirely sure of the point of this post: a somewhat random associative rumination that brings together a German philosopher, a blind Argentinian author, a lovely though not well known, Bollywood movie, and large language models. All I can say is that...
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...
… or check out some random blog posts
Not so Cuil
I was just trying out Cuil the new search engine and came up with some strange results. This is what the front page looks like, rather dark for my liking, but again they had to do something different from Google's stark white front page. if you click on the "About...
Bridging the theory/practice gap: A visual exploration
Theoretically there should a reciprocal relationship between Theory and Practice - but it is the gap that every academic bemoans. This posting is prompted not by any particular insight into these matters but rather to share a set of visuals...
Blogging for the iPhone
I have been playing with an iTouch for the past few days and have have been quite impressed. What bothered me somewhat though was that my website (something I have spent hours designing) didn't morph itself as gracefully as I would have liked into this new interface....
Reading online & off
Nice article in the NYTimes (Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?) about today's generation and how much of their reading happens online (as opposed to reading books). I have seen a change in my reading over time as well. Most of my reading today happens...
The story of stuff
Check out Story of Stuff or watch the movie... [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucMJ32-xp64] For the new version of CEP817 or maybe even CEP917
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...
eBook on Creativity, Technology & Teacher Education
Danah Henriksen and I recently edited a special issue of the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education (Volume 23, Number 3, July 2015) devoted to Creativity, Technology and Teacher Education (see blog post here). This special issue has now been issued as an eBook...
The song remains the same
As I dig through my Research Gate requests I realize that I have missed out on putting some of my articles onto my website. Here is another one (and on a side note, it never hurts to make a Led Zeppelin reference in your paper - actually the paper starts with a quote...
The beauty of the web: Shape of the earth
While searching for information for my previous posting on using eclipses to see, I came across an interesting paper that provided yet another way of figuring out the shape of the Earth. Lynch, D.K. (2005). Turbulent ship wakes: further evidence that the Earth is...