Hot off the press: The Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology, edited by Spector, Merrill, Elen & Bishop. And we have a chapter in it... Complete reference and abstract below: Koehler, M. J., Mishra, P., Kereluik, K., Shin, T.S., &...
Why don’t students like school… In 30 mins!
One of the challenges faced by all instructors is ensuring that students actually read the textbook. This summer we came up with a innovative assignment to address this issue. The book in question was Daniel Willingham's Why Don't Students Like School? A cognitive...
New TPACK themed book on English Education
My friend Carl Young of NCState recently released an edited volume (co-editor, Sara Kajder a the University of Pittsburgh) titled Research on Technology in English Education. It is a volume in the series: Research Methods for Educational Technology, edited by Walt...
Books on visualization & info-graphics
There was a recent query on the PhD-Design-List regarding sources for designers on how to make good info-graphics and data-visualizations. I am collating the options being put forward by people here, just for the record. Manuel Lima's work The book: Visual...
The civilizing effects of technology
Martin Amis was recently interviewed in Guernica (Amis Unfiltered, Santiago Wills interviews Martin Amis). The interview covered a wide range of topics, literature, Obama, and a fascinating digression on the relationship between food and national character! What...
Harris, Mishra & Koehler, republished
Back in 2009, Judi Harris, Matt Koehler and I published in a piece in the Journal of Research on Technology in Education. That article has now been included in a book, titled: Considerations on Technology & Teachers: The Best of JRTE, edited by Lynne Schrum, and...
Martin Gardner, RIP
Martin Gardner, 1914 - 2010 Martin Gardner died five days ago. Gardner was an influential writer about mathematics and was one of the greatest influences on me (and my friends) as I was growing up. His recreational mathematics column was the main reason I subscribed...
Impact of technology v.s. chewing gum on learning
Just got this from Tom Reeves at the CIMA conference, Twente University. Allen, K. L., Galvis, D., Katz, R. V. (2006). Evaluation of CDs and chewing gum in teaching dental anatomy. The New York state dental journal. 72(4): pp 30-33. Abstract: The purposes of this...
Douglas Adams, technologies & anticipatory plagiarism
Image Credit Leeks As readers of the blog know, Matt Koehler and I work together quite a lot. In fact we just rotate author-order in our papers since it is hard to keep track of individual contributions. (I would like to claim that the cool ideas are mine - but again...
Unpacking TPACK, the book
Candace Figg & Jenny Burson have just released a book titled: Designs for Unpacking Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), making this the second textbook that utilizes the TPACK framework. You can find out more about the Figg & Burson book by going to...
Making (non)sense of dots & lines
I love how these interconnected pipes called the Intertubes lead to serendipitous discoveries. Here are two videos, the first I went looking for, and the second, fell into my lap, so to speak, due to YouTubes related videos section. The video I went looking for was...
TPACK in a textbook!
Just found out from Kathryn Dirkin that a prominent textbook of Educational Technology now features the TPACK framework. The book is titled "Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching" [link to Amazon.com] and is authored by Margaret D. Roblyer and Aaron H...
Gandhi, ambigrams, creativity & the power of small pieces loosely joined
This is an extended piece on the manner in which the web, small pieces loosely joined, can lead to “serendipitous connectabilty” (something I had written about earlier here). All this is situated in a story that connects cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstader, Oriya...
Tiger by the tail
A while ago I blogged about a column by David Brooks in the NYTimes (Flipping the Tech & Ed equation). Brooks described research by Goldin and Katz indicating a "race between technology and education" based on the idea that technology is (by its very nature) skill...
Daily routines of creative people
A while ago I had blogged about a webpage that chronicles how "artists work" (see my posting here). Now I discovered a whole website devoted to it. Check out Daily Routines. They are all interesting to read and the common theme that jumps out, for the most part, is...
Games, claims, genres & learning II
Aroutis Foster and I recently published a chapter in the Handbook of research on effective electronic gaming in education (I had posted about it earlier here). The handbook seeks to provide a comprehensive coverage of the use of electronic games in multiple fields....
The reluctant fundamentalist
I just finished reading "The reluctant fundamentalist" a novel by Mohsin Hamid over the break. (I had mentioned this novel in another context here). It is a tight, powerful novel, structured as a monologue, (reminiscent of Camus' The Fall, a fact that few reviewers...
Math Concepts by Gaurav Bhatnagar
Gaurav Bhatnagar is one of my oldest friends - going back to 8th grade in Modern School, Barakhamba Road. He recently published his first book on Mathematics for kids, titled, Get Smart: Maths Concepts, published by Penguin India. The book also has an associated blog...
Why blog
Andrew Sullivan is one of my favorite bloggers, not because I agree with all that he says there is a certain sensibility that emerges as you follow his blog for a while that appeals to me. He has a great piece in The Atlantic Monthly titled Why I blog?. Speaking of...
Wong, Mishra, Koehler & Adams (2007)
Wong, D., Mishra, P., Koehler, M.J., & Adams, S. (2007). Teacher as Filmmaker: iVideos, Technology Education, and Professional Development. To appear in M. Girod & J. Steed (Eds.), Technology in the college classroom. Stillwater, Oklahoma: New Forums Press. Abstract:...
Ghee Happy
Sanjay Patel is an animator at Pixar and has come up with a beautifully designed book about Indian gods and goddesses. Check it out at his website, whimsically called GheeHappy. [You will need to go to the site FAQ to understand what that means.] The illustrations are...
Understanding Chromics
Scott McCloud is one of my favorite people. His book Understanding Comics is just wonderful and I have used it in many of my classes. It is a great way to start a course. Scott made news recently for creating a 38 page comic book to introduce Google's new browser...
A long view of knowledge
I should really visit Salon.com more often. Every time I go there I find something interesting, challenging and thought provoking. My recent foray there led me to a book review written by Laura Miller (The road to Wikipedia). Miller reviews "Reinventing Knowledge:...
Is the web making us stupid?
... or just narrow? I just discovered Britannica blog, a pretty lively virtual space for intelligent discussion. How I had not come across it earlier is a mystery - but again that is the beauty of the web. Anyway, there is an ongoing discussion there about how the web...
Fear, awe and the algebra of the pendulum
In response to my previous posting titled How artists work, Leigh Wolf pointed out a book (Curious Minds: How a child becomes a scientist). I had not heard of this book before and a quick google search led me to this page. Edited by John Brockman (the brains behind...
Visual thinking
While researching my previous post about véjà du and Abraham Wald I came across "The Back of the Napkin Blog" (a.k.a. Digital Roam). This blog is devoted to visual thinking and representation. Very cool and very interesting... well worth a visit. Turns out that there...
Textbooks meet Bittorrent!
NYTimes article on how publishers are responding to the advent of peer-to-peer sharing of textbook files. Check out First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.
Reading online & off
Nice article in the NYTimes (Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?) about today's generation and how much of their reading happens online (as opposed to reading books). I have seen a change in my reading over time as well. Most of my reading today happens...
Only one recipe…
I have been catching up on my reading of Slate and came across this gem of an article by Judith Shulevitz titled, The care and feeding of fiction. Shulevitz has written a quasi-review of James Wood's new book How fiction works and makes we want to read the book...
Bye bye textbooks, buy buy laptops
Reuters story titled Technology reshapes America's classrooms. Couple of quotes worth noting: "Why would we ever buy a book when we can buy a computer? Textbooks are often obsolete before they are even printed," said Debra Socia, principal of the school in Dorchester,...