TPACK Newsletter, Issue #38: September 2018

WHY: The most important question of all

Nov 2, 2015

Why do anything at all? This blog post is a collection of videos and images that I have collected over time that speak to the pointlessness of trying to find an answer to this question and how one question, even if answered, leads to many more. This is the kind of...

Chiayi, Chung Cheng & on to Kuosheng

May 15, 2008

I had been looking forward to the high speed rail journey though I had some concerns about navigating through the train station since most of the signs were in Chinese and Waiway (the graduate student who had come to pick me up from the airport) could not come with me...

Oh, Shi(f)t! Only in India…

Feb 6, 2011

I just came across this sign on a wall in Bhubaneswar. Check it out, nothing less than "Tension free shiting!" All you have to do is dial a number! Here is the sign cropped close Here is the complete sign. It is part of an advertisement for a packing and moving...

Space Invaders in Paris

Aug 13, 2010

France is being attacked by alien beings! This summer in France I noticed characters from 80's video games in the strangest of places. For instance, see this one, that I found while walking somewhere near the Latin Quarter in Paris. And though I took a picture of just...

Video on MSU/Azim Premji University collaboration

Nov 3, 2011

Over the past year I have been involved in an exciting new initiative - a partnership between the College of Education at Michigan State University and the newly set up Azim Premji University in Bangalore, India. (A previous post about our ongoing work can be found...

Why teachers should care about beauty in science

Aug 4, 2016

Figure 1. “We are a way for the universe to know itself” - Carl SaganScience is one of the most powerful ways to engage with the beauty of the universe.We use science to understand the cosmos and, in the process,find beauty in our understandings and...

A different vision of the web

Jan 12, 2009

T. H. Nelson coined the word "hypertext" and more than anyone else, and much earlier than anyone else, truly understood how computing technology would change the text and print. One of my most treasured possession is a copy of his double-book ("Computer Lib: You Can...

Amusings & other creations (from the early web)

Oct 15, 2023

I have been blogging for 15 years now, but I have had a website for much longer than that. I built my first website back in 1998 just as I was graduating from UIUC and entering the academic job market. I still remember the URL (www.uiuc.edu/~pmishra). I designed a...

Anthropomorphizing interactive media

Apr 30, 2008

A recent blog entry about gender and GPS ties in with some research on people's psychological responses to media I had been involved with a few years ago. This line of research led to a bunch of different theoretical and empirical journal articles, conference...