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...
An homage to my mother & grandfather
Ravenshaw University, Cuttack India I gave a talk today at Ravenshaw University (formerly Ravenshaw College) in Cuttack, Odisha on the topic of Rethinking Learning in the 21st Century: Creativity, Technology & Systems Change. I have given many talks...
Math & Visual Wordplay: New video
The word "math" written such that it has rotational symmetryi.e. it reads the same even when rotated by 180-degrees. The relationship between mathematics and visual wordplay is one I have played with and writing about for a while (More here). I just discovered...
By Design & by Chance: New Publication
Dinner in Bangalore with some of the keymembers of the MSU-APU partnership * One of the highlights of my career at MSU was the partnership we built between the College of Education and the Azim Premji University / Azim Premji Foundation....
Ganesh, new ambigram, & old video
One of the big parts of my life over the past decade or more, has been the Ganesh Festival celebrations in Lansing with friends and family—Good food and good times. Of course this year I have to miss all the fun - being here in Phoenix. I have kept up with all...
Creativity as Resistance: New article
Image credit: tshirtgifter.com The next article in our series (Rethinking technology and creativity for the 21st century) for the journal Tech Trends is now available online. This article has an interview with Dr. Shakuntala Banaji, currently Associate Professor and...
Episteme6 @ Mumbai: 2 presentations
This past December I was at the epiSTEME 6 conference in Mumbai. It was jointly organized by the Homi Bhaba Center for Science Education, TIFR and the Interdisciplinary Program in Educational Technology, IIT Bombay. I presented two papers there, oneabout...
Happy Diwali
Happy Diwali! Reflect on it 🙂
Ambigrams & Math: In one embeddable ebook
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...
Poetry, Daisies And Cobras: A Class With Manjul Bhargava
An amazing presentation by Manjul Bhargava (Fields medal winner in Mathematics) to school children in India. See how he effortlessly combines poetry, nature, music and mathematics. Watch an excerpt on YouTube below or the complete video here....
Happy Teacher’s Day (new ambigrams)
September 5 is Teacher's Day in India. It is celebrated on the birthdate of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Indian philosopher and statesman who was also the first Vice-President and the second President of India. He famously said, "teachers should be the best minds in the...
Why math ed sucks (not just in India)
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...
Discrimination in Academia: A personal experiment(?)
Try as we might to be open-minded the truth is that we all have biases. These biases can be subtle and insidious and it is rare that we get to confront them head on. A recent story that has been making the rounds on NPR, InsideHigherEd, and The Washington Post about...
Of math and ambigrams: Exploring Symmetry
Ambigram for Symmetry displaying rotational symmetry I have been writing a series of articles for At Right Angles (a mathematics education magazine) with my friend Gaurav Bhatnagar on the art and mathematics of ambigrams. The first article in the series (Of Art and...
Research to practice : 3 articles
Matt Koehler and I are co-editors for an ongoing series of articles "From Research to Practice" for Education Matters, an educational magazine published by Educational Technology & Management Academy (ETMA). ETMA is non-profit organization based in New Delhi...
26 years ago… My first publication!
Note: If you are not interested in the backstory but just want to read the story you can find a cleaned PDF version here. Mishra, P., & Narasimhan, A. (1987, August). And we all fall down. Science Today. Back in 1986, Anand Narasimhan and I wrote a short story...
New edited series on Research to Practice
A few months ago I was invited (by the Educational Technology & Management Academy, an Indian educational organization) to write a series of short practitioner-oriented articles for a new educational e-magazine they were starting. The idea was to introduce to a...
4 new ambigrams (STEM, STEAM, Research & Gandhi)
Here are four new ambigrams I have created over the past few days. All related in some ways to things I have been thinking about. The first two are for STEM (an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) and STEAM (Science, Technology,...
A published poet! Yes!
I am now, officially, a published poet! My poem on imaginary numbers (The Mathematical "i") was published in the March 2013 issue of At Right Angles, a school mathematics journal. You can read my poem on my website here: The Mathematical "i" You can...
Bollywood meets Guitar Hero
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...
Video on MSU/Azim Premji University collaboration
Over the past year I have been involved in an exciting new initiative - a partnership between the College of Education at Michigan State University and the newly set up Azim Premji University in Bangalore, India. (A previous post about our ongoing work can be found...
Ganapati Festival Photographs, 2011
The Hindu god Ganesh (the elephant-headed one) is celebrated across India, and the world, around this time of the year. The Hindu community in Lansing is no exception. A couple of days ago I was asked to take pictures of a music program at the local temple. It was a...
April 2, 2011… O frabjous day!
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...
Indipix Gallery, cool photographs
The International Conference on Indian Education: The Positive Turmoil. is being held at the India Habitat Center in New Delhi. This Habitat center is a rather cool building and, apart from academic conferences (I saw two different conferences going on at the same...
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...
Off to India
I am heading off to India tomorrow and will be gone for approximately two weeks. The main reason for this trip is to attend the International Conference on Indian Education: The Positive Turmoil in New Delhi. I am scheduled to present and act as a resource person for...
Education in India & the role of the Azim Premji Foundation
Just before the Thanksgiving break, the College of Education and Michigan State University had the opportunity to host Dilleep Ranjekar and Anurag Behar, Co-CEO's of the Azim Premji Foundation. The Azim Premji Foundation is a not-for-profit organization with a vision...
Happy Diwali
Happy Diwali 2010 Readers of this blog know that every year I provide a link to the same interactive Diwali eCard. Why change anything this year? So follow the link below, turn your volume way up, and remember to click on the sky above the Taj Mahal for some...
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...
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...