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...
Happy Thanksgiving
A new design for my favorite holiday of the year. See animated version below. Enjoy Previous designs can be found here and here.
Learning science with the body
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...
Perfect Vacuum (OR who wrote this poem?)
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...
3 super-short stories
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...
Words in 3 Dimensions
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 AM: A poem
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...
Meta Poetry: I and II
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...
The Theater of Creativity
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 valued: A poem
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 School Design Game v 1.0
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...
Pi(e) day, 2019
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...
Technology & Education: A provocation
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,...
Keynote at MITE 2019, Sydney (video)
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...
Aesthetics & STEM education: A new framework
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...
Arts, wellness & creativity: New article
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...
Defense against the dark arts in the Sydney Morning Herald
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...
Posthumanizing creativity
Dr. Kerry Chappell is a professor at the University of Exeter’s Graduate School of Education. She merges her training in dance, her doctorate in experimental psychology and interest in education to develop a transdisciplinary research program on better understanding...
Happy New Year (and a new illusory video)
Since 2008 we have been creating short videos to welcome in the New Year. 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 creation to welcome 2019...
Creativity and the urban STEM teacher
I have written previously about the MSUrbanSTEM project and what it has meant to me. Over the past couple of years we have also published about this line of work (most prominently in a special issue of The Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching)....
The future of work & learning: An interview
I had posted earlier about my visit to Bangalore back in summer to participate in the Quest 2 Learn Annual Summit organized by the Quest Alliance. The two day conference focused on The future of work and learning. During my visit I was interviewed by Aakash Sethi, the...
Sketching MSUrbanSTEM
I have been playing with my iPad a bit, experimenting with sketching and drawing apps for a few months now. I have realized that it is important to give yourself a task, a clear end-goal to work towards if I had to get anywhere. So with that in mind, I decided to...
Learner autonomy and creative reflective practice: New journal article
Herbert Simon, famously wrote: Everyone designs who devises courses of actions aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The first two words in this quote are now the title of a recently published journal article (with Danah Henriksen and William...
Ambigrams & Mathematics at HYSA
The Gary K. Herberger Young Scholars Academy (HYSA) is a school designed for highly gifted students in grades 7-12 affiliated with the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College and Arizona State University. Last Friday I had the pleasure and honor of working with all the...
On taking beautiful risks
Dr. Ronald Beghetto, Professor of Educational Psychology in the Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut, is an internationally recognized expert on creative thought and action in educational settings. He is a Fellow of the American...
Collaborative Haiku
A silent white boardScribble a first line, and waitEmergent haiku. Last Friday, goofing off between meetings, I scribbled one line, five syllables long, on one of the white-boards in our office space. Within a few minutes, lo and behold, was a lovely haiku,...
LanguageART: Meaning making through type & image
I love collecting quotations—usually related to learning, design, and creativity. Over the past couple of years I started trying to visualize these quotations, playing with type and image, to tease apart their meanings, sometimes to undermine, sometimes to enhance. I...
John McCain, RIP
• • • • • • • • •John Sidney McCain IIIAugust 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018 The above image is a visual / typographic representationof one his favorite quotesfrom For whom the bell tolls,by Ernest Hemingway Image © punyamishra
Of raindrops and dying flowers
The rainfall in June –the poems I’ve pasted to wallspeel off, but leave traces.~ Basho All photos taken with my iPhone8©punyamishra
Arizona in black & white
Over the past two years in Arizona I have had the opportunity to indulge in my love for photography. Recently I felt the need to play with Adobe Sparks - and what better way to learn a new tool than to use it to create a photo album. Enjoy.