Update on blog post that was published May 30, 2018 - since the article is now published (2 years since it was accepted for publication). Square Root: Illustration by Punya Mishra What do President Kennedy's speeches have to do with cell biology? And what does the...
The Center for Science and the Imagination at ASU has a new series called Us in Flux. Every two weeks they publish a (super-short) short story that explores "themes of community, collaboration, and collective imagination in response to transformative events." They...
As a part of our series of conversations with creativity scholars we recently spoke with Dr. Sandra Russ, Louis D. Beaumont University Professor, and interim dean at the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychological...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic8FHlawAdA Over the Memorial day long-weekend I just felt the need to create something to commemorate the 100,000 individuals, in the United States, who have lost their lives over the past few months to COVID19. That is a staggering...
All of us involved in social design (and I include education in among those as well) ask ourselves, or are asked this question: How do we measure the impact of the work we do? This begs the question, why measure in the first place? Lord Kelvin, one of the greatest...
Kij Johnson, an award- winning author, editor, and Associate Professor in the University of Kansas’s MFA in Creative Writing program. In her teaching Kij brings some serious credibility as an artist, scholar, and all-around “uber-geek.” Kij has published three novels,...
- afternoon walklingering on the shore linetime for reflection - - Reflections © Punya Mishra. All photos taken with my iPhone, over the years. (published 2/27/20, revised with new photos 3/16/20) On Reflection: Haiku by Catherine from her website: Still Standing on...
I have seen the power of the market… But when it becomes the only language, when it becomes the only way of thinking about the right thing to do, it leaves us with a very impoverished sense of how to live together -- Giriharadas, 2018 Over the past few years I have...
Design is core to my identity, to who I am. Education is the space within which I function but I try to approach everything I do as a designer. This was not always the case. Back in 1984, I had just graduated with an undergraduate degree in engineering, and if there...
Dr. Barbara Kerr is Distinguished Professor of Counseling Psychology, and is co-director of the Center for Creativity and Entrepreneurship in Education at the University of Kansas. She utilizes innovative counseling and therapy approaches to better understand the...
We have been creating short videos to welcome the new year since 2008. This year was no exception. These videos, created on a shoe-string budget, are usually typographical in nature with some kind of an optical illusion or AHA! moment built in. Check out our latest...
Fibonacci’s PoemDecember 10, 2019 (!)OneWordIt startsSlow but sureExpanding out numerically, adding moreMarching forward, doing the math, not asking why Knowing the ratio of words, in this line and previous, will equal Phi!A number, elegant, emergent, magical; found...
A cosmologist worries (about infinity)December 2019 They cannot scare me with their empty spacesBetween stars--on stars where no human race is.I have it in me so much nearer homeTo scare myself with my own desert places.~ Robert Frost, Desert Places A cosmologist,...
Dr. Vlad Glaveanu, is Head of the Department of Psychology and Counseling at Webster University, Geneva; Associate Professor at Bergen University, and Director of the Webster Center for Creativity and Innovation. He co-edits the book series Palgrave Studies in...
A new design for my favorite holiday of the year. See animated version below. Enjoy Previous designs can be found here and here.
We often think and understand the world using our bodies. Our senses and movement shape how we form and process knowledge. Paul Reimer, Rohit Mehta and I explore this idea and its educational implications in a new article published in iWonder: Rediscovering School...
I was cleaning out my drafts folder and came across this poem. I liked it. A lot. It has my sensibility. My sense of whimsy. But I DO NOT remember writing it. Nor do I remember finding it somewhere and copying it into an email. There is no author attributed - which...
Students in my EDT180 class spent some time yesterday writing short stories. Super short stories, trying to tell a complete story in just 55 words! As it turns this (55 Fiction) is actually a thing – as a simple google search will reveal. Seeing my students engage in...
A few weeks ago I started doodling words in 3 dimensions, for no particular reason, and before I knew it I had a bunch of interesting designs. Here is a sample: A bit of goofing around with Keynote and some royalty free music from Kevin McLeod, and I had a little...
4 AMJuly 17, 2019 The stupid smoke detectorsBeep IncessantlyThere are two of themRunning this conversationWith each otherThrough the night Their batteries dyingOr dead Funnily enoughThey fall silent during The dayLull you into thinking It is okIt was just a glitch But...
This sentence refers to itself. This sentence declares that this blog post is about 2 poems I wrote recently. Both these poems are self-referential to some degree, namely both poems are about poetry. I have been interested in self-reference for along time—and this...
Dr. Tatiana Chemi is assistant professor and researcher at Aalborg University, Denmark. She has a background in theater that gives her an unique perspective on creativity, the creative processes and the contexts that allow creativity to flower. In her research she...
Creativity is greatly valuedCreativity is greatly valued For his sharpness His ability to look beyond The surface And willingness to Give it a shotTo break Out of the box The cubicle And jump When the towers burnt Who knew Box cutters Had...
The journey of design is complicated, filled with conundrums —some expected, others not so much. There are many possible strategies to address them as we iterate our way to the finish line. The School Design Game seeks to explore some of these complexities...
A design created in celebration of Pi-day, 2019. (More context about the day here and more about the number itself here). As always, the OofSI team celebrates Pi(e) day by offering a selection of Pi(e)'s - exactly at 1:59 PM. Totally irrational I know! Apart from...
Jill Castek, at the University of Arizona, invited me to participate in an NSF funded workshop on developing "Principles for the equitable design of STEM learning environments." The event was being held at Bioshpere 2, which is this awesome place near Tucson. Because,...
I was recently invited to present a Keynote at the Mobile Technology in Teacher Education (MITE) 2019 Conference hosted by The University of Technology, Sydney. This was the fifth edition of the conference, and as it turns out, I had given a keynote at the first...
I have always been intrigued by the nature and role of the aesthetic experience in learning. A few members of the Deep-Play research group have been exploring this issue for a while (for instance we have written on, why science teachers should care about beauty in...
Dr. Paula Thomson and Dr. Vicki Jaque are professors at California State University, Northridge, where they co-direct the exercise and psychophysiology laboratory. They each have their own individual research interests but together they work on researching connections...
I was in Sydney recently to present a keynote at the MITE conference. I spoke there about some issues that have been concerning me for a while—what I like to call the "dark arts" of digital technologies. After the conference I had a wide-ranging interview with Jordan...