Theoretically there should a reciprocal relationship between Theory and Practice - but it is the gap that every academic bemoans. This posting is prompted not by any particular insight into these matters but rather to share a set of visuals (ambigrams, memes,...
Paris has been on my mind for the last 24 hours (as it has been for many others around the world). I have been lucky to have had the opportunity to spend some time in the city - and Paris is one of my favorite places in the world. Paris, anyway you look at it (a new...
Over the past couple of years my research team (the Deep-Play Research group) and I have been writing an on-going series of articles around the broad topic of Rethinking technology and creativity for the 21st century. Published in the journal TechTrends, these...
Over the past two years Gaurav Bhatnagar and I have written five columns for the Math education journal At Right Angles on the topics of mathematics and visual wordplay, specifically Ambigrams. In this five articles we have explored everything from symmetry to...
The summer of 2015, there were 133 students and instructors in the hybrid and overseas components of the MAET program. These people were spread out across three locations: East Lansing, MI (with 2 cohorts, Yr1 and 2 of MAET); Chicago, IL (with 2 cohorts of the...
I have been creating ambigrams for years now... and I feel extremely lucky that what started as a personal interest and passion has led to some wonderful experiences and learning. These include a series of articles on the mathematics behind these visual designs and...
I am a huge fan of the show Brain Games on the National Geographic channel. Brain Games focuses on the workings of the brain and the reasons we do what we do. The show is quite creative about how they explain ideas, using a range of techniques games, visual illusions...
I have shared earlier a design for a reflection ambigram for the two words "praise" and "blame" - where one word becomes another when reflected in a mirror. In fact the design has been printed in 3D. As it turns out this was a design that I had made many years ago -...
My friend Hartosh Bal (author of A Certain Ambiguity, a mathematical novel) has a piece in Caravan Magazine titled "Why Fields medalists are unlikely to emerge from the Indian educational system." He mentions the fact that of the three winners of the Field's medal...
Vijay Iyer, (http://vijay-iyer.com/) is an Indian-American jazz pianist and composer. He is a MacArthur Genius grant winner and is currently Franklin and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University and is widely regarded as being one of...
Self-similarity in geometry is the idea of repeating a similar shape (often at a different scale) over and over again. In other words, a self-similar image contains copies of itself at smaller and smaller scales, such as the image below of the word "zoom."...
I just read of the sad demise of Nalini Ambady, social psychologist at Stanford. Her research on the accuracy of first impressions connected with me (from the moment I first glimpsed it). As the NYTimes reports (Nalini Ambady, Psychologist of Intuition, Is Dead at 54)...
I just discovered that Learning & Leading with Technology had an article, back in 2010, about the TPACK game. The TPACK game is something Matt, Judi Harris and I had come up with for the National Technology Leadership Summit in Washington DC, back in 2007. Matt...
TCRecord has an interesting essay on the role of games and learning, by Alexander, Eaton & Egan, titled: Cracking the code of electronic games: Some lessons for educators. As they say, "This is an analytic article that provides a description of an array of...
Over the Christmas break my daughter and three of her friends got together to make a music video. The idea was simple, what if there were a version of Guita Hero (Sitar Hero anyone?) for Bollywood songs. Out of this idea emerged a 5+ minute long music video - with a...
To understand the significance of April 2, 2011, I have to go back 28 years, back to the summer of 1983. I had just finished 10th grade, and that summer I took a trip to the hills of North India, as a part of a social work volunteer effort. I remember sleeping on the...
Back in January I was invited to speak at the Drexel Learning Games Network (DGLN) seminar series. As I had written in my original post (TPACK & Games @ Drexel), DLGN is the brainchild of Aroutis Foster, former graduate student, now rising star academic and...
I am headed to Drexel University to give a talk at the Drexel Learning Games Network seminar series. The DLGN is the brainchild of Aroutis Foster, former graduate student, now rising star academic and researcher. As the DLGN website says The Drexel Learning Games...
I was recently invited to present a keynote address at the 21st Century Instructional Technology Conference (titled Elements of Technology) at the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada. Clark County is the 5th largest school district in the country with...
There have been various descriptions of the TPACK game... some of which I have written about earlier. The first instance is something Judi Harris, Matt and I used at the 2007 NTLS meeting at Washington DC. You can find out more about it here. Second, is a submission...
My friend and colleague Leigh Wolf forwarded me this article on Edward Tufte: The Many Faces (And Sculptures) Of Edward Tufte. I have been a fan of information design guru Edward Tufte's work for years (decades?). I love his emphasis on clarity and simplicity in...
I just discovered Peter O. Gray's blog on Psychology Today, titled Freedom to Learn: The roles of play and curiosity as foundations for learning. This is an awesome blog and really worth reading. Here are two of his posts that I strongly recommend. The first states...
Ken Friedman, whose article I had used as the basis of my previous posting, From incompetence to mastery, the stages dropped me an email in response to my critique. To provide some context, (you can read my full post here) I had suggested in my posting that it may be...
I had written earlier about the idea of Jugaad, the quintessential Indian idea of situational creativity. One of the masters at this is Arvind Gupta. Check out his website for tons of wonderful science toys and experiments that can be made from stuff we typically...
I just ran across this blog (Color Me Katie) that just blew me away. Katie Sokoler is a freelance photographer and street artist living in Brooklyn - and her blog just throbs with life, and energy and the sheer pleasure of living. That's her down there blowing bubbles...
Physics Games - online physics-based games. Some cool stuff here. For instance check out Demolition City Online Physics Games
Note: This post was updated on March 21, 2024 since some of videos were not showing up for some reason. Over the past few months I have been working with my kids on creating short thematic videos. The themes we chose were the three words, Explore, Create & Share....
The Office Faculty and Organizational Development at MSU conducts an annual Spring Institute on College Teaching and Learning every summer. The past week was their 15th such event (details here) and I was asked to conduct a workshop on Creative Teaching. I was...
I am off to Charleston, SC for the SITE 2009 conference. . I can't believe it has been a year since Matt Koehler and I presented our Keynote. I am sending this note sitting in the Michigan Flyer bus (making good use of their free wi-fi) and am looking forward to a...
... 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...