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LLMs are WEIRD Stochastic Parrots
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about how AI systems trained on WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) data risk creating a flattened, culturally homogenized version of human psychology. In my post (titled, S’more problems: Generative Ai,...
Flawed Jade
I had three conversations this week. One with a colleague, one with a furniture repairer, and one with a physicist who’s been dead for decades. They fit together somehow… and this blog post is the result. Story 1 Lydia Cao is a friend, and colleague (faculty at the...
While We Weren’t Looking: The Real Digital Revolution Beyond School Walls
What is the role of technology in learning? I have devoted a large part of my professional life to this question, though I have increasingly started to wonder whether we, personally, and as a field, have been asking the wrong question. We have focused our attention on...
Whose Voice? Whose Accent? Navigating Authenticity & Impact in AI-Generated Content
I've had the pleasure of co-hosting the AIR|GPT podcast, where I've gotten to know Errol St. Clair Smith as one of the most thoughtful curators of education-related news and information I've encountered. Errol has this uncanny knack for bringing diverse voices...
Three Years of Gen AI: Back to School Edition of AIR|GPT
It's been 1000 days since ChatGPT launched. Not that anybody was clamoring for a hallucinating ChatBot but here we are. A friend once told me about a Gujarati business principle: give any new venture 1000 days, roughly three years, before deciding whether to continue...
The perfectly wrong person for the job: My essay on the future of the orchestra
Note to readers: This is the story of how I came to write an essay called "Why Gödel and Escher But Not Bach" for a book about the future of orchestras. I should add that I know almost nothing about orchestras and feel deeply uncomfortable in public classical music...
On Becoming: Insights from the Modem Futura Podcast
I recently had the pleasure of returning to the Modem Futura podcast for a second conversation with hosts Andrew Maynard and Sean Leahy, and guess what, it was even more fun than the first time around. What started as a discussion about the latest AI developments in...
The Page is a Stage: AI Debates as Academic Theater
Sometimes the best academic work emerges from moments of pure play. That’s certainly true for our recent paper “The Staging of AI: Exploring Perspectives About Generative AI, Creativity and Education,” which just appeared in the Journal of Interactive Media in...
The Loss of Nuance in discussions of AI in Education
In which I respond thoughtfully to a journalist's question about AI in schools, watch my nuanced argument get reduced to a single quote, and reflect on how complexity gets flattened at multiple levels—from educational policy to media coverage. I recently wrote a post...
Bilingual Tomfoolery: Phonetic Visual Puns & Puzzles
Four copper pots. A fountain pen on a bus. A bull with a crow. A peacock in a bucket. What cities do these represent? And here's a bonus round: a swimming pool with a tiny lawn island floating in it—what fruit is this? Finally, glass of tea, a banana, and someone...
The art of having it both ways!
Do I contradict myself?Very well then I contradict myself,(I am large, I contain multitudes.)~ Walt Whitman; Song of Myself, 51 Last week I published two blog posts on the same day, which is relatively rare – but it does happen. What is truly rare is that in these two...
Against Simplification: On the value of small rebellions
Scott Carlson's recent article (On the Dangers of 'Simplification') in The Chronicle of Higher Education explores James C. Scott's influential book Seeing Like a State. Reading it, something clicked into place—a recognition of why I've spent decades swimming against...
F*** Nuance: A reflection on TPACK and theorizing
It is rare that one comes across an original journal article title that one HAS to click on and read. For instance, my favorite title of all time has been Alison Gopnik's article titled "Explanation as Orgasm." Not only is this a catchy title, it also make a profound...
Prompts vs. Principles: Contrasting OpenAI’s Study Mode to Real Educational AI
In which I examine OpenAI's much-hyped "Study Mode" and contrast it with a couple of real research-based approaches. The differences are telling. Read on… OpenAI recently announced “Study Mode” for ChatGPT with considerable fanfare, claiming it was built “in...
Brains Without Minds, Eyes Without Hands: Revisiting Visual Literacy in a GenAI World
Everyone seems to be clamoring for AI literacy these days—how to prompt effectively, how to spot AI-generated content, how to integrate these tools into workflows. I have been critical of this phenomena, see my post on pencil literacy and a new definition of literacy...
Grok This! When AI goes off the rails (Ep. #9 AIR | GPT)
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. I remember when “x” was just the “unknown” – the variable that we needed to compute. It could be anything, but also knowable. Now “x” is a toxic wasteland. I remember when Grok was a lovely word, created by Heinlein, back in the...
The Hidden Cost of AI in Schools: As Expert Teachers Work Harder, Can Novice Teachers Keep Up?
A recent study by Neil Selwyn, Marita Ljungqvist, and Anders Sonesson titled When the Prompting Stops begins with GenAI's beguiling offer to educators: "What can I do for you?" But what unfolds isn't a story of seamless automation—it's a story of repair. Drawing on...
Between Imperative and Panic: Navigating AI’s Educational Moment with Leon Furze
Over the years, our column series in TechTrends has explored the intersections of creativity, education, and emerging technologies. Over the past year, we’ve explored a wide range of perspectives on GenAI through interviews with leading thinkers like Ethan Mollick,...
Teaching in the Age of AI: Reflections from EDULEARN25
I was recently invited to the 17th annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (EDULEARN25) in Palma, Spain. Getting to visit beautiful Palma, Mallorca, speaking with 800+ educators from across the world... what could be more awesome? At...
New Course—Education by Design: Synthesizing Learning Experiences with AI
Education by Design: Synthesizing Learning Experiences with AIDCI 691: Fall 2025 | Thursdays 9 - 11:45, Tempe CampusInstructor: Punya Mishra Calling all creative risk-takers! This graduate-level course explores how design, as both a way of thinking and as a...
In defense of tinkering
Summary: In which I explore why tinkering—messy, creative, often undervalued and overlooked—is not only a valid way to approach teaching, but perhaps one of the most honest. My friend Josh Brake recently wrote a Substack post (Don't tinker with AI in the classroom)...
The Edge Cases Are Endless: Google’s Digital Plastic and other Curriculum-Shaped Objects
Summary: In which I explore three sticky metaphors—digital plastic, curriculum-shaped objects, and the endlessness of edge cases—and how they illuminate the risks of AI-powered education tools that look like learning but fail to teach. In a previous blog post (The...
Kant, Borges, & AI go to Bollywood: Connections Nobody Asked For
Intro: I am not entirely sure of the point of this post: a somewhat random associative rumination that brings together a German philosopher, a blind Argentinian author, a lovely though not well known, Bollywood movie, and large language models. All I can say is that...
The Rorschach Test of AI Research: New Episode of AIR | GPT
Two recent studies about AI and education have been receiving enormous attention—MIT's "Your Brain on ChatGPT" and the World Bank's "Chalkboards to Chatbots." Initially, I wanted to write a detailed post dissecting both studies, but I held back for two reasons: first,...
Drawing with Circles: Vibe coding the Fourier Transformation
In my presentations I sometimes talk about my four years in engineering school as being something of a disaster. The way I present this fact is through this image, and the math/science types get the pun - Four Year / Fourier Transformation! A slide I typically use in...
Six Principles for Educational Technology Implementation: A Global Perspective
A few months ago, the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation at Arizona State University hosted the 2025 Yidan Prize Conference. This conference was both a celebration of my colleague Micky Chi’s receipt of the 2023 Yidan Prize for Education...
Making Waves (& Flocking Birds): Creating Science Simulations with AI
I've been experimenting with AI-assisted coding for a while now—in fact my first attempt was back in early 2023. Since then I have engaged in multiple explorations using AI to transform concepts and intuitions directly into functional code. This approach bypasses...
Small pieces, meaningful connections: Why I love the open web
One of blogging's greatest pleasures, often unspoken, are the truly serendipitous connections one makes. Not networking in the conventional sense, but unexpected encounters with people who find something on my website that connects with them and they reach out. These...
Large Language Models: A Postmodern Nightmare (built by Silicon Valley)
I am a huge fan of Arthur Brooks' regular columns in The Atlantic where he writes about meaning, love, and happiness, with twin goals, "to understand these parts of life more deeply, and impart to others whatever understanding I can glean." I appreciate his insights...
Reflecting on a Semester of Discovery, Creativity and GenAI
This past spring semester I taught (with Nicole Oster and Lindsey McCaleb) a masters/doctoral seminar on Human Creativity x AI in Education. I had wanted to write this post after our last class meeting over a month and a half ago—but travel and life kept getting in...