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...
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...
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...
Bringing Design to Education: IDC Talks
I was recently invited to speak at a series organized by alumni of the IDC School of Design, IIT Powai. As an alum of the same institution it was a great honor to be invited. You can see the entire series here (and I must say there are some awesome speakers there). My...
Aesthetics and science education: Beauty at Work podcast
Beauty at Work is a podcast that "explores how beauty shapes our lives and the work that we do" hosted by Brandon Vaidyanathan, Associate Professor of Sociology at The Catholic University of America. In its first season the focus is on beauty in science. As part of...
Creative Provocations: Speculations on the future of creativity, technology & learning (New Book)
I am excited to announce the publication of a new book, edited by Danah Henriksen and yours truly. Titled Creative Provocations: Speculations on the future of creativity, technology & learning, it is part of the Springer series on Creativity Theory and Action in...
Speculative fiction and the future of learning
One of the most fun projects I have been part of was working with authors of speculative fiction around the futures of learning. This was the result of a collaboration with the Center for Science and the Imagination, Slate magazine and New America (supported by the...
Silver Lining for Learning wins 2022 AECT Award
I learned, this morning, that the Silver Lining for Learning team (the webinar series I co-host with Chris Dede, Curt Bonk, and Yong Zhao) won the 2022 AECT Distinguished Development Award. For a completely unfunded, passion project that started at the beginning of...
Things we hold on to (in a shifting world)
Title image created using Dall E 2, with input by Punya Mishra My colleague Jill Koyama shared an essay published in the Refugee Research Online journal, titled "It's all in the bag: Refugees and Materiality."...
Complicating the idea of Design Thinking (in Education)
“Design thinking” is one of the latest buzzwords in education. Proponents argue that design thinking is a tried and tested process for fostering innovation in education while critics suggest that it is the latest fad to sweep through, and will, like others before it,...
Educational Futures Thinking: New book chapter
The philosopher George Santayana (1910) famously stated, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (p. 284). In other words, the “best” way to prepare for the future is to study the past and through that, identify patterns and trends, and then...
The futures of higher ed with Phoebe Wagner
The Center for Science and the Imagination at ASU runs a series of short stories and virtual gatherings that explore issues related to transformative change. Essentially they solicit and publish a (super-short) short story that explores “themes of community,...
Cybersecurity & the Future of Education
I was recently interviewed by David W. Schropfer for his DIY Cyber Guy podcast. David is an expert on cybersecurity and, and that is the focus of his podcast. I am clearly not an cybersecurity expert, so I was somewhat surprised at being invited to his show. What...
Silver Lining for Learning as a driver of Innovation
We recently celebrated 100 episodes of Silver Lining for Learning (see the 100th episode or read my blog post about the journey). In this process we have had an opportunity to speak with some amazing people – educational leaders, innovators, administrators, deans,...
My favorite(?) failure
I was recently asked to write a chapter for a book that my colleague Ron Beghetto was editing with Laura McBain, called My Favorite Failure. Failure is never fun - and to pick one that was your favorite, is like deciding what your favorite form or torture is....
100 and counting: Silver Lining for Learning
March 11, 2020 (a little over two years ago), just around when the pandemic had forced educational institutions across the globe to shut down and transition to remote learning, my friend Yong Zhao reached out to Chris Dede, Curt Bonk, Scott McLeod, Shuangye Chen and...
Creativity online & in maker spaces
As a part of our ongoing series on creativity, technology and learning for the journal TechTrends we recently spoke with two nationally recognized scholars: Dr. Leanna Archambault and Dr. Edward Clapp. See below for introductions to both scholars as well as...
Presentation at University of Zurich
I was invited by my friend Dominik Petko, Professor of Teaching and Educational Technology at the Institute for Educational Science at the University of Zurich to make a presentation to their faculty and staff. The video of my presentation (Contextualizing TPACK...
Creativity, risk-taking & failure in education
Failure and risk-taking are essential to the creative process. It is rare that good original, creative work or ideas come together in the first try. Thus, an important component of engaging in creative practice is both an acceptance of potential failure as well as a...
Value Laden: A new podcast about ethical leadership
What is the role of values and principles in educational leadership? What can we learn from inspirational educational leaders? How did they develop their moral/ethical compass, and more importantly, how do they bring these perspectives to the work that they do? These...
STEM Futures at AAAS
ASU recently hosted, what is known as, the world's largest scientific gathering, the annual conference of the American Association of the Advancement of Science. As as part of this conference I was invited, along with Ariel Anbar and Trina Davis, to talk about our...
Fishing for problems: Podcast interview
I was recently interviewed by Matt Schneidman (Curator, Creator, Podcast Host) for his Fishing for Problems podcast. Matt also publishes an ed-focused newsletter. Our discussion was broadly framed around educational technology and the TPACK framework - but...
Designing STEAM
Danah Henriksen and I were recently invited to present a keynote (and conduct two workshops) on design thinking and STEAM education at the 2021 NV STEAM conference, organized by the Nevada Museum of Art and Desert Research Institute. Of course, given the pandemic...
Educational Change by Design: A school for the future
How do we design a school for the future? This recent article seeks to capture (in the form of a case study) our recent experience in designing such a school. The design process was a collaborative process involving a partnership with a local school district and the...
TPACK & More: Presentation at RemoteK12 summit
REMOTE K12: The Connected Teacher Summit, was a one-day virtual summit hosted by ASU, designed for K-12 teachers and those that support and enable teachers in district public, charter and private schools. I presented a talk titled: Technology in teaching &...
Learning futures: Designing the horizon
I was recently invited (along with Sean Leahy and Jodie Donner) to present at the Winter Games, Digital Immersive Experience organized by ShapingEDU at Arizona State University. Our talk was titled Learning Futures: Designing the Horizon. We described our session as...
Teachers ARE designers (in many different ways)
One of the pleasures of academia is working with awesome graduate students. This paper is an example of such a collaboration. Melissa Warr, for some reason or the other, decided to do a network analysis of some of the top-cited papers related to teaching and design....
Learning Futures: The Podcast
What if education systems were doing more and thinking differently about preparing learners to thrive in the future? The Learning Futures Podcast (from Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College) is a series of conversations on improving education and the future of learning....
Creativity, risk-taking, education
EduSummIT is a global community of policy-makers, researchers, and educators working together to move education into the digital age. The last EduSummit (2019) was held in Quebec, Canada and I was a member of Thematic Working Group 3 (TWG3) on Creativity for Teachers...