Glass half full?

Beyond Skills: A conversation on Futures & Learning

Oct 11, 2025

A few months ago I sat down with my friend Bhawna Parmar as a guest on the Quest for Better Futures podcast. Readers of this blog will remember Bhawna from her insightful article in The Caravan that had inspired a previous blog post: While we weren't looking: The real...

The Curiosity Paradox: How Sycophantic GenAI May Undermine Learning

Jan 11, 2026

Over the years, our column series in TechTrends has explored the intersections of creativity, education, and emerging technologies. Over the past year, we've examined GenAI's impact through interviews with leading thinkers, practitioner studies, and conceptual pieces...

On rejection: A mini-rant about current academic scholarship

Nov 13, 2024

It started with a rejection. That's nothing new - we academics collect rejections like kids collect Pokemon cards (or whatever it is that they collect these days). But rejection, if it must come, must be for the right reasons. This particular rejection hit...

TPACK survey, new journal article

Jan 24, 2010

Hot off the press: Schmidt, D. A., Baran, E., Thompson, A. D., Mishra, P., Koehler, M.J. & Shin, T. S. (2010). Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK): The development and validation of an assessment instrument for preservice teachers. Journal of...

CEP917 receives AT&T award, update

Apr 17, 2013

I had written before, CEP917: Knowledge Media Design, a course taught by Dr. Danah Henriksen and myself, in the Fall semester of 2012, received First Place (in the Blended Course category) in the2013 MSU-AT&T Instructional Technology Awards Competition. The awards...

Of Three Minds

Apr 5, 2026

I was of three minds,Like a treeIn which there are three blackbirds.—Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" I thought of Stevens's three minds earlier today when I looked at my calendar for the upcoming week. That’s what I usually do on Sundays,...

Being a tourist in Taipei

May 17, 2008

I woke up this morning, feeling maybe for the first time in this entire trip, tired and a little homesick. I ascribe the first to the rather hectic schedule I have had the past 10 days so, continually on the move, presentation after presentation, meeting after...

Sketching on the iPad

Sep 15, 2011

Over the past few weeks I have been experimenting with using my iPad as a drawing/painting tool. The sketches below were created by tracing on an existing image - usually a photograph. So this is not "freehand" drawing per se - but given my limited talents that may...

Hobnob with MSU faculty

Apr 6, 2009

Paul Morsink & Bakar Razali, two graduate students in our college have been doing this interesting variant of the 60 second lecture. They record short videos of individual faculty members talking about anything that interests them and through that allow viewers to...