Synthesis: A creative cognitive tool (2 articles)

by | Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Over the past couple of years my research team (the Deep-Play Research group) and I have been writing an on-going series of articles  about rethinking technology and creativity for the 21st century. Published in the journal TechTrends, these articles have been great fun to write, providing us the freedom to think deeply about these issues and, most importantly, put our ideas in words, and share them with the wider world. The last few have focused on transdisciplinary habits of mind that are essential for creativity. Our previous articles have looked at PerceivingPatterning, Abstracting, Modeling and Play. 

The next two articles (listed below) have focused on Synthesis. These two articles are co-authored with different colleagues, but manage to provide complementary visions of the idea. Here are the two latest articles (a complete list can be found here):

  1. Henrkisen, D., DeSchryver, M., Mishra, P. & the Deep-Play Research Group (in press). Transform and transcend: Synthesis as a trans-disciplinary approach to thinking and learningTech Trends (59)4.
  2. Lee, J., Hicks, D., Henriksen, D., & Mishra, P. (2015). Historical soundscapes for creative synthesis. Tech Trends (59)5. 4-8.

A few randomly selected blog posts…

The strange beast that is higher ed

I have blogged previously about the challenges faced by higher education (here and here), exacerbated (or maybe revealed) by new technologies. Here is an essay by Charles Murray -- not a person I thought I would ever cite approvingly 🙂 He has a recent essay in WSJ...

Walking away from Happy Valley

I have been haunted the past week or so with the scandal enveloping Penn State. Much as been written about it already - and I really have nothing fundamentally new to offer to this discussion. What I did want to share was a parallel that struck me recently about these...

Photos from the AT&T Award ceremony

The award ceremony for the 2008 MSU-AT&T Instructional Technology Awards was last Friday. I drove back from Purdue in time to be there - mainly because I wanted to hear how people would respond to our faux radio interview 🙂 The event went off well, and people...

Generative AI: Will history repeat or (just) rhyme

Generative AI: Will history repeat or (just) rhyme

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...

Chimp number sense…

A video, brought to you by Slate, titled "How smart are chimps?" I apologize in advance for the commercial at the beginning of the video.

TPACK @ AERA, 2009

I did not go to AERA this year - choosing instead to go to Chicago to Keynote the Engaging Minds: Pedagogy and Personalism, the 2009 DePaul Faculty Teaching and Learning Conference. We did have a paper to be presented there (and I am sure our Iowa State friends must...

Research conduct: The movie

From Ken Friedman & the PhD Design listserv: The current issue of The Scientist has a story on an interactive film that helps research students and early career researchers to understand and navigate the perils of research misconduct. Highlights: "The Lab is a...

My Illusions on the web

There are a couple of websites that feature work done by me. I had written earlier about Brad Honeycutt's website An Optical Illusion at (http://www.anopticalillusion.com/). He now features four different ambigrams created by me: You can find them on this page on his...

Finding humor in play

Learning through play has been an important part of my philosophy of teaching (and learning). In fact I have argued that play is far more important than games (though games have been receiving a great deal of educational interest lately). [You can read a previous...

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