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...
Anyone who works in the area of social design knows how important it is to develop a systems-oriented mindset and how difficult it is to do so. One one hand, we know that sustained change is possible only when we work at the level of systems not individuals and...
One of the most exciting projects we have been involved with in the Office of Scholarship and Innovation (OofSI) has been our partnership with the Kyrene School District. We have written about it previously (on the OofSI site as well as on my website),...
I just got back from a trip to Israel. I was invited by the MEITAL 2019 conference and the Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts. MEITAL is an organization of higher education institutions in Israel focusing on understanding and responding to local...
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...
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...
How might we? Three words, and a question mark. At one level it is a simple question—leaving open what it is that we might do. But at another level its openness is its strength. Because inherent within it is a call to action, a discomfort with the way things are, and...
Every December the Office of Scholarship & Innovation (OofSI) team looks back at the year that was, to document and reflect on all that we have done, as well as to plan for the future. This information is then put together in a report that captures our successes...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Most of the work that we do at the Office of Scholarship and Innovation at the Teachers College is practical and pragmatic—working with school districts through our community design model, reimagining what university technology labs can be, supporting faculty in their...
I had posted earlier about the work our design initiatives team is involved with at Miami Junior-Senior High School. Essentially the entire faculty and leadership at the school have taken on the challenge of re-imagining the 7/8 curriculum through an integrated...
"Time" 180-degree rotationalchain ambigram © Punya Mishra I have been at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College for two years now (actually two years and a month, but who is counting). In many ways this has been an incredible two years, a period of personal and...
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...
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,...
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...
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.
I just got back from a lovely few days in Bangalore. I was there to participate in the Quest 2 Learn Annual Summit organized by the Quest Alliance. Convened at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), on the campus of the Indian Institute of...
Over the past year the Office of Scholarship and Innovation (OofSI) at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, ASU has been engaged in supporting faculty research; creating digital solutions for learning; bringing collaborative design-based...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Quest Alliance is an NGO based in Bangalore that seeks to equip young people with 21st century skills by enabling self-learning. I have known of Quest and its director, Aakash Sethi, for over a decade now. In fact I had blogged about Quest back in 2008 here, and...
One of the greatest pleasures of my work here at ASU (with the Office of Scholarship & Innovation) has been the work we have been doing with local school districts. Essentially we collaborate with partner districts and community organizations to develop...