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.
Expert eyes on creativity
Since 2012, the Deep-Play Research Group has been publishing a series of articles under the broad rubric of Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21st Century in the journal Tech Trends. This has led to 33 articles (and counting) and...
Fractals, ambigrams & more
Photo & and design © Punya Mishra.The photo of bubbles was taken with cell phone camera (equipped with a macro lens). Fractals are mathematical/geometrical structures that exhibit self-similarity at increasingly small (or large) scales. Fractals were...
Contemplating creativity
Photo/Image Credit: Punya Mishra Dr. Jonathon Plucker is an educational psychologist at Johns Hopkins University where he is the Julian C. Stanley Professor of Talent Development in the School of Education. He has received numerous recognitions for his work, including...
Paradoxes, illusions & visual wordplay
Figure 1: Eye-llusion Over the past few months I have been somewhat obsessed with visual illusions, ambiguous images, impossible figures and other such fun stuff. This led to the design of a brand new optical illusion, combining an ambiguous image with an...
Education by Design, new fall course
I am excited about my new fall course, titled Education by Design. This is a heavily reimagined version of a class that I taught a couple of times at MSU and once here (last fall at ASU). The MSU version that I co-taught with Danah Henriksen received First...
Unleashing Creativity: ISTE interview
A few months ago I was interviewed for an article in Empowered Learner, an ISTE member magazine. The final article, Unleashing every genius: Creative genius isn't rare – but the conditions that nurture it are is now online. You can access the entire issue of the...
James Kaufman on creativity: New article
Dr. James C. Kaufman is Professor of Educational Psychology in the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut and a highly-renowned creativity researcher. He is also a writer and playwright, having recently written the book and lyrics to the musical...
Developing a culture of creativity: Research news
Danah Henriksen and I were featured in a recent news story on the MLFTC News titled: Developing a culture of creativity, instead of compliance, in educators. The article provides an overview of our work over the past few years. Given the nature of a news article, it...
Rethinking 7/8 curriculum at Miami/Globe
One of the most exciting parts of my job are the cool people I get to meet. Glen Lineberry is one of them. Glen is Principal at Miami Junior-Senior High School. He describes his school as a “small rural school on the move.” The first thing that strikes you when you...
New optical illusion: An oscillating visual paradox!
A design for the word "illusions" inspired by a design by Scott Kim. I have been obsessed with optical illusions for for a long time. This interest has played out in many ways: from the hundreds of ambigrams I have created to the new year’s videos we create as a...
Design, Intuition & Creativity
Chain-Rotational ambigram design for the word "design."One can read the word both clockwise from the top or anti-clockwise, from the bottom. Our latest article in the series we write for the journal TechTrends (under the broad rubric of Rethinking Technology...
Squaring a circle on Pi day!
Pie upon reflection is nothing but 3.14!A new version of a design I had created a year ago.Original idea stolen from the Interwebs Since it is Pi(e) day, I thought it would be fun to share another design I had created a while ago in response to one of the...