I teaching CEP817, Learning Technology by Design in the spring semester. This is a course I love but it also one that needs to be redesigned. So I am always on the look-out for new resources that can help me rethink the class. I just came across the following website:...
Posts related to: Good | Bad Design
How not to conduct research
Note: This post has been edited somewhat to (a) clearly hide the url, which I had not done a good job of before; and (b) to add a few suggestions in the last paragraph for some strategies to make it easier for the participants to take part in the study. (September...
Website problems
My website has been facing all kinds of problems over the past few weeks. We have been working on figuring out what went wrong and trying to ensure that it doesn't recur - but it has taken a while and it's not clear to us whether we have it all figured out. So the...
EPET in the Spotlight!
The current issue of TechTrends (Volume 57, Issue 3, March 2013) is a special spotlight issue, and the spotlight this time around is on the Educational Psychology and Educational Technology Programs at Michigan State University! This special spotlight issue was edited...
Designing 917: A conversation
Danah Henriksen and I taught CEP917 (Knowledge Media Design) last semester. This was a somewhat unique class, with half the students being present here on campus and the other half online. We met synchronously once every two weeks and the rest of the class happened...
The future will not be a multiple choice test
From Chris Sloan, teacher at Judge Memorial Catholic High School and a student in our hybrid PhD program, comes a link to a TED talk. The description is as follows: Creative genius Drew Davies and forward-thinking educator Jaime McGrath propose a new approach to...
The font of truth i.e. the beauty of Baskerville
I have been a great fan of Baskerville, the font for a long time. I love the manner it looks on a page and most importantly I love its italic ampersand! Check it out below... isn't that beautiful. I remember setting my doctoral dissertation in Baskerville and...
Deep-play, creativity, design and teaching with technology: New journal article
I am extremely proud of what we do as a part of our Master's in Ed Tech (MAET) program. It is a unique program and over the years we have worked hard to make it a multi-faceted and unique experience for your students. Over the next few weeks I (with some help from...
Creativity is just connecting things
Steve Jobs retired as CEO of Apple this past week. The Wall Street Journal marked this event by creatingSteve Job's Best Quotes compendium. There are all worth reading - but a couple stood out for their connection to this course. Creativity is just connecting things....
Funny TPACK mashups, the Aussie way
TPACK is huge in Australia (for instance see this note TPACK underpins Aussie Teacher Ed Restructuring). I am hopeful that one of these days this interest will translate into a trip down-under... It would be great to travel around the continent, giving talks, meeting...
Rethinking Ed Tech Research…
I have been a huge fan of Don Norman ever since I first ran into his book on the Psychology of Everyday Things (which he later renamed as The Design of Everyday Things, and the story behind that name change is worth reading as an excellent example of design). Don...
When tech comes first: The Khan Academy as leading pedagogical change
As I go around the country talking about the TPACK framework, one of the questions that is always put to me is, about which comes first when planning a lesson, content, pedagogy or technology. The standard answer is that content comes first since it is only after we...
Oh, Shi(f)t! Only in India…
I just came across this sign on a wall in Bhubaneswar. Check it out, nothing less than "Tension free shiting!" All you have to do is dial a number! Here is the sign cropped close Here is the complete sign. It is part of an advertisement for a packing and moving...
Models of design, creativity and more…
The Dubberly Design Office has created a series of models of innovation, play and design. These are terrific resources and I just found out about them by chance. I see these as being quite significant in the classes I teach, including CEP817: Learning Technology by...
New triplet Ambigram (Now in 3D)!
A few weeks ago I had shared a few triplet-ambigrams I had designed. For the uninitiated a triplet ambigram is a 3-d shape that cast different, and interesting, shadows depending on where you shine light on it. For instance here's a triplet ambigram that casts three...
Creative Idiots share their process
Slate Magazine is running a series on Creative Pairs, or why Two is the Magic Number! Written by Joshua Wolf Shenk the series seeks to understand: What makes creative relationships work? How do two people—who may be perfectly capable and talented on their own—explode...
Rethinking homework, some thoughts…
Shelly Blake-Plock over at TeachPaperLess has a great post about homework and how it can be structured to act as a "cliffhanger." As he says: These days, the homework I give isn't based on some arbitrary idea of how much work a kid should do 'at home' to reinforce...
TPACK game, the Matt Koehler version
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...
On breaking the rules (and words)
My daughter on her blog has a new poem / haiku called Sweat, a haiku with one glich. She is in India right now where the temperatures are easily in the 90's - which I guess explains the genesis of the poem. What was more interesting, to me however, was the manner in...
Cool i-Images at MICDS
I just spent a day at MICDS in St. Louis talking with a small but select group of teachers about creativity in teaching, the role of big ideas, the meaning of TPACK, the importance of trans-disciplinary learning (among other things). What a wonderful way of spending...
ISTE 2010, TPACK Radio/Video Show!
I have never been able to make to the ISTE (formerly NECC) conference since it falls bang in the middle of my summer teaching. This year was no exception. The only problem is that, this year, Matt and I had been invited to a special forum by SIGTE (titled "Considering...
Walking in a straight line
Determining the shape of the earth is something I have written about previously. For instance, see this post on seeing the shape of the earth using eclipses. (A somewhat similar effect could be seen in my photo of the moon during a lunar eclipse). On the web, I found...
Indian creative genius
A great article titled the: The Subtle Technology of Indian Artisanship: From saris to hand-painted signs, design thinking is an unacknowledged force in Indian craft by Ken Botnick & Ira Raja. I have written about ideas such as these earlier, particularly in the...
Autonomy, mastery, purpose
This presentation of a talk by Daniel Pink has been making the rounds on the Interwebs. I am including it here just as a personal reminder for me to use in my teaching AND as an example of a wonderful presentation style. Check out RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising...
Inspiring creativity, when more is more…
We have all heard the statement that "less is more" and in many instances that may actually be true. Good design, for instance, often is based on the KISS principle, which, come to think of it, maybe an example of Less is More. That said, there may be situations where...
Teacher as filmmaker: An update from down under
Back in 2007, I was second author on a paper titled Teacher as Filmmaker, in which we described an approach to teacher professional development that involved teachers creating short, evocative movies, which we called iVideos. You can read the paper and abstract...
Thoughtless acts? Technology, creativity & teaching
I have always been interested in the manner in which people use (or re-use) everyday things for purposes they were never intended for. Be it a piece of red tape to mark a glass door so that people don't slam into the glass (as I see at the MSU clinical center every...
No excuses! Veja du (or don’t you)
Excusado by Edward Weston I have written earlier about the idea of veja du (which ended up becoming an assignment in my creativity class). To recap: ... if déjà vu is the process by which something strange becomes, abruptly and surprisingly familiar, véjà du is the...
Cool logos
I just came across this page of excellent logo designs. Some of the designs may need a moment or two to truly register. Check out 20 Unique and Creative Logo Designs. Here are couple of my favorites.
(de)Signs, a series on Slate
Slate magazine is running an interesting series by Julia Turner on signs and their design. Two articles are now up The Secret Language of Signs: They're the most useful thing you pay no attention to. Start paying attention. Lost in Penn Station: Why are the signs at...