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It Takes Two: A scientific romp using AI
Dark 'n' Light is an e-zine that "explores science, nature, social justice and culture, through the arts and humanities." It is a labor of love by a small, dedicated team led by Susan Matthews, former legal and policy wonk, turned editor and podcaster. I came to know...
Teaching an old dog new tricks
I have been playing with Photoshop Beta, a version of Photoshop with a range of AI-powered tools that let you add, extend, or remove content from your images using simple text prompts. This is similar to Adobe Firefly, a web-based image manipulation / generation tool,...
Creative uses of ChatGPT for Education: A conversation with Ethan Mollick
Ethan Mollick is a professor at the Wharton School of Business and studies and teaches innovation and entrepreneurship. He also leads Wharton Interactive, an effort to democratize education through games and simulations. He is also one of the most innovative users of...
6 Videos (on the 5 spaces for design in Education)
Learning Sparks is a new initiative at ASU that feature short, 5-minute, videos showcasing the expertise of a range of ASU faculty members. These videos are carefully crafted, with high-production values seeking to capture big ideas in bite-sized chunks. A few months...
Talk at Fulton School of Engineering
Last August I was invited to speak at an event organized by the Ira Fulton School of Engineering's Learning and Teaching Hub. For some reason I had not posted about it — so better late than never... here it is, a 30 min talk followed by QnA....
TED talk: How to design a school for the future
My TED talk, titled How to design a school for the future just went live this morning. Sadly, I was traveling in India when the recordings were scheduled so I missed the whole "standing on the red-dot" looking like a thought leader who will give a talk that will...
How to identify AI generated text?
I think I solved the biggest educational challenge of our time, namely: How do we recognize AI generated text from human-created ones? Just to provide some context, the advent of large language models and generative AI have made it essential that we, as educators,...
AI in teaching & learning: A critical response (by AI)
AI in education can aid But bias and fairness must be weighed Educators and students must co-design To make assessments more fine And ensure learning growth is not delayed The above is a limerick created by AILYZE (www.ailyze.com) to summarize the recently released...
TPACK & Philosophy
I often receive emails about the TPACK framework and even though I have not worked in that space for a while, I do feel obligated to respond. That said, I usually do not feel the need to document my responses. Once in a while, however, I get a question that demands a...
On designing aesthetic educational experiences in science
What is the role of beauty (and aesthetics) in science in science education? This is something that I have been interested in for a long time, going back to highschool. Over the years I have built a small body of scholarship around this topic. Sadly, this work does...
RickRolled by AI
ChatGPT does not cease to surprise. As I had described in my previous post (Plugin' into superpowers), I have been playing with some of the plugins that are now available to use with ChatGPT4, In this post I describe my experience in playing with a plugin titled Video...
An Euclidean coincidence
FYI, this is a somewhat pointless blog post around a somewhat funny coincidence that popped into my life the other day. I was reading a recent article in the NYTimes with the provocative title: Microsoft Says New A.I. Shows Signs of Human Reasoning, clearly a topic of...
Plugin’ into superpowers
I have been playing with couple of the newly released ChatGPT plugins (you have to have the paid version to use them) and want to share some of my early experiments. The two I am going to talk about are the ChatWithPDF and the Wolfram plugins. Short answer, they are...
We Have Always Been Rhizomatic
Danah Henriksen and I were recently asked to write a foreword for a book titled New Directions in Rhizomatic Learning: From Poststructural Thinking to Nomadic Pedagogy edited by Myint Swe Khine. This was a fun foreword to write and allowed us to explore a range of...
Cleaning and coding Interviews with AI
I have previously written about how AI can possibly help with qualitative research AND how how AI has given me a superpower which is the ability to write computer programs. Well this post is an extension of both of these topics. To provide some context, for the past...
Coding with ChatGPT3: On gaining a superpower
I had heard that ChatGPT3 could help with writing code and just hadn't much time to play with it. Part of the reason is that I haven't really coded in almost 2 decades (maybe more) so was somewhat hesitant to jump in. But again I kept reading of people doing amazing...
Scaling up the SCALE Instrument
Back in 2017, Carmen Richardson and I wrote an article (Richardson & Mishra, 2017) in which we proposed an instrument (Support of Creativity in Learning Environment: SCALE) designed to assess the ways in which a learning environment supports student...
Krishnamurti & Dewey in the Metaverse
I am writing a paper with Marina Basu about how John Dewey's and Jiddu Krishnamurti's philosophies of education and their implications for learning in increasingly mediated environments. While working on the paper, it struck me that it may be fun to see what Bing Chat...
Qualitative research in an age of AI
Qualitative data can be extremely rich, complex and insightful, allowing us to uncover the complexities of human experiences, perceptions, and interactions. It can also be complicated and messy. And the way we make sense of it is through the one-two punch of thematic...
Gilbert Daniels, the gardener who changed our world
Note: I wrote and submitted this piece as an op-ed to the Indianapolis Star to be published on April 14, 2023, exactly 3 years after they had published Gilbert Daniels' obituary. It would have helped set the record straight about his amazing contribution to the world...
Tools “R” Us: When objects become you
Danah Henriksen shared an article with me recently “When objects become extensions of you.” It is an interesting piece arguing that “Whether they are tools, toys, or mirror reflections, external objects temporarily become part of who we are all the time.” Essentially,...
Bringing Design to Education: Benjamin Cluff Jr. Lecture at BYU McKay School of Education
I was recently invited to present the Benjamin Cluff Jr. Lecture by the dean and faculty at the Brigham Young University, McKay School of Education. I had a short but lovely visit, meeting old friends, and making new ones. We had some wonderful conversations, over...
A chat about GPT3 (and other forms of alien intelligence)
We recently celebrated the 10-year anniversary of writing a regular column series on Rethinking Technology & Creativity in Education for the journal TechTrends. Over the next few articles in this series, we are going to dive deeper into Artificial Intelligence...
Tell me a story: Delightful design in an airport
“Design doesn’t need to be delightful for it to work, but that’s like saying food doesn’t need to be tasty to keep us alive” — Frank Chimero I am always looking for examples of good and bad design in the world around me. Good design is rare, functional and at the same...
Using AI to digitally clone myself (AKA creating a Puny-Punya)
Note: The photo-manipulated image of me holding my own head was created almost 20 years ago by Paul Kurf, a student in my learning by design, class! Image design & layout, Punya Ethan Mollick is a professor at Wharton and he has been doing some of the most...
Good to be back, SITE 2023 New Orleans
The Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education conference has been an important part of my professional life for over two decades. My first presentation at a SITE conference was back in 2001 at Orlando, Florida, with none other than Matt Koehler. For the...
From Crayons to AI: New article (10 years of writing)
Ten years ago, we, The Deep Play Research Group, were invited to write a regular series of articles for this journal exploring the relationship between technology, creativity and learning. To celebrate this anniversary, we decided to write two summary/ synthesis...
Learning styles in the classroom? What BS! (But Bing Chat doesn’t care.)
One of the most enduring myths in education is that of learning styles. I had written about it back in 2009 in a blog post titled: Teaching to learning styles: What hogwash. But it a myth that does not seem to go away, maybe because it seems to have some kind of...
ChatGPT3 is bulls*** artist
Back in 1986 the philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt wrote an essay titled "On bullshit" which he then expanded into a book, published in 2005. Essentially, the essay and the book are a rumination on the distinction between "bullshitters" and "liars." He argues that:...
ChatGPT3 writes a Mathematical Proof (in verse)
Many years ago I got interested in writing poetry about mathematics (all archived on my Math-Poetry page). Just to be clear, I am not a good poet (far from it) and I am even less of a mathematician—but it was a fun exercise to engage in. That said, a couple of my...