A great honor: 10 most influential people in Ed Tech

by | Monday, May 30, 2011

I just found out that I made “The Big 10: The Most Influential People in EdTech for 2011.” This list is created by the Tech & Learning journal—a magazine for Ed Tech leaders. This news came  as a total surprise to me since I did not know that I was even in the running for something like this. The June issue, which has this as a cover story, will be out in a few days though you can access it on the web (link below). Here’s the cover, and that’s me on the first row (second from the left).

The other nine people are really some of the biggest names in the business. They inclue, Doug Levin, Karen Cator, Greg Festa, Ann Thompson, David Warlick, John Kao, Salman Khan, Jonathan Ive and the Apple design team, and the Google for Educators developer team! Even as I type these names, I wonder if there has been a mistake in including me in this list. How did this list come to be? This is how the note from the editor describes the selection process:

Who has the biggest influence over your career? Your first instinct is most likely to point to a boss or a colleague, or maybe even your students. But there are other people out there, far removed from your everyday business in classrooms and administration offices, who are creating new devices, crafting policy, and pursuing far-out ideas that will ultimately have a huge effect on how you do your job.

These are the understated yet significant men and women picked for this year’s most-influential list (“The Big 10,” page 33) in a survey of readers and advisors plus a dash of editorial privilege. We believe that these men and women will profoundly change the way we think about learning in school, how we use technology to effect that change, and how we incorporate policies that make that change nationwide.

It is indeed a great honor to make this Big 10 list, and I am humbled and grateful to the editors and people who proposed my name and voted for me. I hope I will be able to live up to this recognition.

To top it all they got a professional illustrator to create pretty cool cartoons of each of the people on the list. I think mine came out pretty good 🙂

You can find the magazine online (PDF version) here.

 

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16 Comments

  1. Ajay Sharma

    Just learned about it.Very cool! Congratulations, Punya. As others have said, you definitely rock!

    Reply
  2. Payal Arora

    fantastic news… not surprised though!

    Reply
  3. dheera

    congratulations …….

    Reply
  4. Josh Rosenberg

    Punya you rock! The site I developed for Learning Through Design is rocking… http://www.studybio.com

    I’m considering designing sites for other teachers.

    Josh
    twitter.com/jrosenberg6432

    Reply
  5. Lynn

    You have a halo!!!

    Reply
  6. Bob Reuter

    WOW! That’s great news! I personally can only confirm that it was a good choice to include you in this list… because your TPACK papers have substantially and deeply changed my theoretical views and my teaching practices… Thanks for making many things clearer to me and my colleagues!

    Reply
  7. Prakash Unakal

    Congrats!!

    Reply
  8. Marion

    Congratulations punya

    Reply
  9. Pankaj jhunja

    Congratulations, on this achievement

    Reply
  10. Sean Nash

    Wow. This is very very cool. It took me a while to figure out why they would paint a halo behind your head. I mean, you always seemed like a super guy to me, but… I had no idea it was that extensive.

    Then I realized TPACK. Got it now. Not sure why I was so bubble-headed myself.
    😉

    What an awesome honor. I’d ask for an autograph, but you don’t ask a guy who has been a guest blogger in your space to do such a thing. Actually, your digital signature is already there. Cheers!

    Reply
  11. benoy mishra

    wonderful.

    Reply
  12. benoy mishra

    woderful.

    Reply
  13. pratima

    Hey Punya, congratulations!

    Glad to read this news. Keep it up good work and best wishes for the future.

    Pratima

    Reply
  14. raj

    WOW, Punya,,, Cant say much more.. Keep it up.. I am sure you deserve it.

    Regards,

    Raj

    Reply
  15. Saikat Mandal

    Congratulations Sir. I am very Happy to have you as my Guide.!!

    Reply

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