véjà du, all over again

A Socio-cultural Perspective on Creativity, Tech & Ed

Mar 20, 2022

Almost exactly a year ago Danah Henriksen, Carolina Torrejon Capurro and I submitted a chapter for the second edition of the book Creativity and Innovation: Theory, Research and Practice edited by Jonathan Plucker. Given the time that had elapsed, since we had written...

Generative AI is WEIRD!

Dec 19, 2023

Note: This blog post was almost entirely written by ChagGPT based on an analysis of a set of images I had uploaded onto it. The image above (Weird AI) is an original typographic design created by me. The background sky was created by Adobe Firefly. To give some...

Of certainty & doubt

Sep 3, 2009

The NYTimes has a op-ed piece today by Max Blumenthal about an obscure letter Eisenhower wrote to "Robert Biggs, a terminally ill World War II veteran." Biggs was worried by ambiguity and uncertainty he seemed to observe in president Eisenhower. He wrote that he:...

SITE 2008 Keynote

Mar 18, 2008

The SITE Keynote presentation by Matt Koehler and myself is finally ready to release to the world. I know converting 350 sildes, and synching them to the narration was a huge task - and Matt has already spent countless hours on this. He ended up with a 60 GB file...

Creativity, risk-taking & failure in education

Jul 1, 2021

Failure and risk-taking are essential to the creative process. It is rare that good original, creative work or ideas come together in the first try. Thus, an important component of engaging in creative practice is both an acceptance of potential failure as well as a...

Principled Innovation meets Design: 1 new model and 2 videos

Feb 24, 2020

Our college has embraced the idea of Principled Innovation as being a core value that informs everything we do. (More on this in this post by Cristy Guleserian and in the PI framework document). Defining Principled Innovation: Design by Punya Mishra At the heart of...

Generative AI: Will history repeat or (just) rhyme

Mar 10, 2024

As generative AI continues to reshape our world, we're faced with a crucial question: Will we repeat the mistakes we made with previous technologies or will this time be something different? George Santayana famously warned, "Those who cannot remember the past are...

Inside-Out: Happy 2015

Dec 27, 2014

Every winter break (for the past six years) our family creates a video to welcome the new year. This is no ordinary video. It requires days of discussion, planning, construction, shooting, and editing. Our videos never feature us (expect maybe a still-shot of the...

iPhones, higher ed & faculty resistance

Aug 21, 2008

Today's NYTimes has a story Welcome, Freshmen. Have an iPod about universities handing out iPhones and iTouchs to freshmen. A part of this may be making specific universities look "cool" to their incoming students - a requirement in the highly competitive world of...

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