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...
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...
We are hiring… join our team
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...
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...
Better late than never, 21st century learning
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...
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...
Community Design Lab at Madison
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...
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...
TPACK at SITE, AERA & ISTE: Newsletter #36
Modification of the TPACK diagram to capture all the sessionsrelated to TPACK in three upcoming conferences. Here is a link to Issue #36 of the TPACK newsletter—a special spring conference issue that contains citations and abstracts for all of the TPACK-focused and...
Reimagining a College of Education at AACTE 2018
I was recently in Baltimore for the 70th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE), with a team from the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. We presented the work we are currently engaged in under the broad title...
Evaluating creative learning environments: New instrument
Note: There is a more recent, May 2023 post (Scaling up the SCALE instrument) that offers an update on other researchers who have utilized the instrument for their own research. Creativity is a key educational goal and essential 21st century skill. That said, much of...
NEW BOOK! Creativity, Technology & Education
I am thrilled to announce the publication of a new book, a Mishra-Henriksen production titled Creativity, Technology & Education: Exploring their Convergence. This book is a collection of essays that first appeared the...
Sliding into 2018
Over the years our family has developed a mini-tradition of creating short videos to celebrate the new year. These videos are short, always typographical, and usually incorporate some kind of a visual illusion. Our craft has improved over the years, something that can...
Social Media: New Ambigram
New 180-degree rotational Ambigram for "Social Media:"
Happy Thanksgiving
One updated ambigram (for Thanksgiving) and one new design for the word "Gratitude." Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Cybernetics, design & creativity
180 degree rotational ambigram for the word "cybernetic," ©punyamishra Here is the next article in our series Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21st Century for the journal TechTrends featuring an interview with Dr. Paul...
STEM teaching & leadership for urban educators
The MSUrbanSTEM project was one of the best projects I have ever been part of. We worked with 124 Chicago Public School STEM educators over three years, in an effort to develop their teaching and leadership in the STEM areas. We have written about this...
Design book-review podcasts
I am teaching a new masters/doctoral seminar titled Design in the real world. This is the first class I am teaching here after coming to ASU and it is exciting to back in with students engaged in discussions about design, technology, and its role in our...
The beauty of randomness
I have always been intrigued by the idea of how truly random our lives really are. Seemingly minor events can trigger effects, rippling through our lives, effects becoming causes, leading to profound changes and transformations. Ray Bradbury's short...
2017 Torrance Lecture on Creativity
This past April, I delivered the annual E. Paul Torrance Lecture at the University of Georgia. Being invited to give this talk was a huge honor, for two main reasons. First, because of Paul Torrance, the person for whom this lecture is named. Dr. Torrance, known...
Organizational & Team Creativity
Illustration for Group-Creativity by Punya Mishra The next article in our series Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21st Century just got published by the journal TechTrends. This article features an interview with Dr. Roni...
Origin-al Interface snafu!
The Origins Project at ASU is an attempt to explore humankind's most fundamental questions about our origins. As the website says, This project brings "together a diverse collection of the world’s leading scientists, scholars, and public intellectuals...
Robert Pirsig, 1928 – 2017
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was one of those books that have influenced me deeply. I read it when I was in high school and read it again and again, almost obsessively for a while. It was my companion through college, graduate school and beyond. I...
The reductive seduction of other people’s problems
The reductive seduction of other people's problems, Illustration by Punya Mishra Anurag Behar forwarded an article: The Reductive Seduction of Other People’s Problems, which I really think is a must-read for any of us involved in education or development. The...
Blurred visions: Another history of TPACK
I had posted recently a video based on a talk I had given at ASU. In that video I spoke about the role of theory in research through a history of the TPACK framework. You can see the video here. Now, my TPACK partner in crime, Matt Koehler, has created his own...