I presented yesterday at a conference a Wake Forest University titled: Creativity: Worlds in the Making. I was part of a panel that included Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein and Todd Siler. More details about the panel and links to my presentation can be found below....
Bad poetry time: Clerihews
Just when you thought I had run through all the bad poetry I can spew (see here for my palindromic poems) here is another set of poems I had all but forgotten about. A few years ago I got hooked into writing Clerihews. For the uninitiated: The clerihew is a bit of...
Palindromes in video and poetry
Leigh Wolf just sent me a link to this extremely creative YouTube video. The funny thing is that I had seen this a while ago but I didn't get it. Of course now that Leigh explained it to me, it seems so obvious. Anyway, the narration is crafted in such a way that it...
Yet another periodic table…
The ongoing saga of mis-representing the periodic table for any darned list of objects continues... Here is a new one sent in by my friend and colleague Patrick Dickson: A periodic table of Typefaces. Now I won't beat a dead horse here, (Nashworld has a great posting...
SITE08 Keynote YouTubed!
I just found out (via These Apples are Delicious blog, and more specifically this posting: Creative Teachers) that the keynote that Matt and I presented at SITE08 is now available on YouTube! Somebody went through the effort of breaking up the video into 5 parts and...
Representing DNA as code
What does it mean to represent something? Sean Nash (of Nashworld) and I have been having some fun at the expense of periodic representations (my post and his response) and even children's books. I had been wanting to write about this for the past few days but travel,...
The 60 second lecture
I received an email yesterday from the State News (our local university newspaper) about what I thought of the 60 second lecture—a trend sweeping through online courses. Some of my first thoughts about this are below. If you don't know what they are, check out this...
TPACK tshirt now available
The ambigram design I had first presented here is now available through cafe-press in a variety of formats. Click here to buy t-shirts, buttons and more... Just to be clear, the prices for all the items are exactly what cafe-press charges. Matt and I make no money of...
Bits to Atoms, A Fab lab
I had heard of Neil Gershenfeld's work on the Bits to Atoms Project at MIT but thought of these Fabrication Labs as being too expensive ($500,000+) or esoteric for everyday or classroom use. But one fine day I got an email from Glen Bull from Virginia informing me of...
TPACK Ambigram
I have been wanting to create a TPACK ambigram for a while now... what would be better than combining my two greatest loves - technology integration in teaching WITH ambigrams! Finally after some subtle prodding by Matt Koehler I have finally done so. This is a...
The benefits of doodling!
Finally science has proved what I knew all along, doodling is a sign of an alert mind and may actually help memory!! Another justification for this, I guess.
Optical illusions go live…
If you love optical illusions you have to see this... just absolutely brilliant. The moment she pulls out the driver's license is priceless. And of course the face / vase flip-flop at the end is cool too. See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor. This...
Bangalore symposium, now on YouTube
This past August I was in India for a Symposium on Education Technology in Schools: Converging for Innovation & Creativity. The meeting was organized by the Quest Alliance, USAID and International Youth Foundation and was "designed to bring together education and...
Visualizing periodic tables (What not to do)
Sean Nash (of Nashworld) sent me a link to A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods of Management. This is a very cool looking representation developed by Ralph Lengler & Martin Eppler at the Institute of Corporate Communication at the University of Lugano,...
Multiple representations of the periodic table and learning
Mishra & Yadav (2006) was a paper based around my dissertation research. It took a while to get published and I am including it here for the record. My dissertation (Mishra, 1998) was maybe the first place where I made a specific mention of the triad of...
Slumdog night (and Rahman)
Slumdog rolled into the Oscars tonight. More important to me were the two Oscars for A. R. Rahman for original score and song. It is time that the world recognized his genius. Here is a cartoon by Kaladhar Bapu from his site Point Blank A.R. Rahman by Kaladhar Bapu
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...
EduPunk: The logo
I had written about the EduPunk program and my natural affinity to it here. What I forgot to add in that posting was an EduPunk logo I had created. This logo was made using photos of letterforms from Flickr. There is a handy-dandy tool created by Erik Kastner called...
MSU Technology Showcase: The Usual Suspects
I have been invited by Patrick Dickson, Byron Brown and Jon Sticklen to offer a lowkeynote address (note emphasis on lowkey!) for MSU's Second Annual Faculty Technology Showcase (more details here). I have created a small presentation to go with my lowkeynote, slides...
The Allegory of the Cave
Plato's Allegory of the Cave (see Wikipedia entry) illustrates "our nature in its education and want of education." It is maybe one of the most famous allegories in literature and philosophy, a precursor to the kinds of mind-games (think brain in a vat) that...
Finding myself in EduPunk
Matt Koehler introduce me to the idea of edupunk. As this Chronicle story (Frustrated With Corporate Course-Management Systems, Some Professors Go 'Edupunk') says, Edupunk seems to be a reaction against the rise of course-managements systems, which offer cookie-cutter...
A different language
I have always been interested in how we use words to capture intangibles. For instance wine connoisseurs have developed a specialized language (which sadly is quite opaque to me) to explain to each other characteristics of wine. So the words "fruity" and "dry" have...
Barriers to Innovation & Inclusion
Leigh Wolf just sent me this video created by the Johnson Space Center on Barriers to Innovation & Inclusion. A Google search led to this description: Last summer, Johnson Space Center senior management coordinated a center-wide, cross-generational effort to explore...
EdTech 2009, Ashland Virginia
I am at Ashland, Virginia for EdTech 2009 to be held on the campus of Randolph-Macon College. You can find the complete schedule here. EdTech2009 is an annual two-day conference (that has been going on for over 20 years now) hosted by the Educational Services staff of...
TE150 presentation in streaming video
Terri Gustafson has created streaming downloads of the presentation recently made by the TE150 (Reflections on Teaching, Reflections on Learning) Online team (see this for more context). The video can be seen in two parts: Part I: The presentation "Reflections on...
Presentation/Workshop at Twente
I just completed a presentation at the symposium organized by the Department of Curriculum Design & Educational Innovation, University of Twente. Later this afternoon I will be conducting a workshop on creativity and the TPACK framework. The slides for both the...
Cool clock design
Just thought I would share an example of interesting clock I saw during my stay here at Twente, made almost entirely of cardboard! front view back view Enjoy
Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries
... Or Why I love the web. I stumbled upon a piece (Lotus Blossom) by Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries the other day... and it was like nothing else I had ever seen. At some superficial level it looked like kinetic typography, but both simpler and more complex at the...
The more things change…
I had posted earlier about a recent commercial that, though arguing at one level that technology can fundamentally change education, seemed to stick to the standard-lecture (albeit in different and cooler modes of transmission). Just how little the discourse around...
Playing with light and shadows
Stumbled upon the creative work of Kumiya Mashita. It is amazing just how much can be created with just light and shadows. Just brilliant. Here are some examples: