“The environment is where we all meet, where we all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share. It is not only a mirror of ourselves, but a focusing lens...” ~ Lady Bird Johnson “A system is never the sum of its parts; it’s the product of their...
“When I see equations, I see the letters in colors — I don’t know why. As I’m talking, I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Ernde’s book, with light-tan j’s, slightly violet-bluish n’s, and dark brown x’s flying around. And I wonder what the hell...
This past spring semester, I taught (with Nicole Oster and Lindsey McCaleb) a masters/doctoral seminar on Human Creativity × AI in Education. When we set out to design the class, we knew we were venturing into relatively uncharted territory, committed to examining...
A few months ago I sat down with my friend Bhawna Parmar as a guest on the Quest for Better Futures podcast. Readers of this blog will remember Bhawna from her insightful article in The Caravan that had inspired a previous blog post: While we weren't looking: The real...
I was recently invited to speak at the Universel Conference 2025: Empowering Humane Technology. You can find the abstract, and an embedded video of my talk below. The Promise and Paradox of creative AI What happens when an AI can write a mathematically perfect poem,...
Our TechTrends series on technology, learning and creativity, has focused recently on generative AI's impact on education through expert interviews, practitioner experiences, and historical analyses. This article addresses a critical challenge: How do we create...
At our most recent AIR|GPT podcast meetup (our regular monthly "airport" gathering), Ruben Puentedura introduced us to the concept of "pedagogical debt," inspired by comment by Ian Bogost (in a recent Atlantic article titled AI Has Broken High School and College)....
A little less than a year ago, my friends and colleagues, Marie Heath and Stephanie Smith Budhai reached out to me asking me if I would be willing to write a foreword to their book Critical AI in K-12 Classrooms: A Practical Guide for Cultivating Justice and Joy. I...
Earlier today I had a Zoom call with a doctoral student interested in having me on her comprehensive examination committee. During our conversation, she expressed interest in understanding the idea and process of design, particularly as it applies to educational...
In our new paper published in AI-Enhanced Learning, my colleagues Nicole Oster, Lindsey McCaleb, and I argue that while educators debate classroom integration strategies, the most profound transformation is happening outside traditional learning environments. We...
What is the role of technology in learning? I have devoted a large part of my professional life to this question, though I have increasingly started to wonder whether we, personally, and as a field, have been asking the wrong question. We have focused our attention on...
It's been 1000 days since ChatGPT launched. Not that anybody was clamoring for a hallucinating ChatBot but here we are. A friend once told me about a Gujarati business principle: give any new venture 1000 days, roughly three years, before deciding whether to continue...
Note to readers: This is the story of how I came to write an essay called "Why Gödel and Escher But Not Bach" for a book about the future of orchestras. I should add that I know almost nothing about orchestras and feel deeply uncomfortable in public classical music...
In which I respond thoughtfully to a journalist's question about AI in schools, watch my nuanced argument get reduced to a single quote, and reflect on how complexity gets flattened at multiple levels—from educational policy to media coverage. I recently wrote a post...
Scott Carlson's recent article (On the Dangers of 'Simplification') in The Chronicle of Higher Education explores James C. Scott's influential book Seeing Like a State. Reading it, something clicked into place—a recognition of why I've spent decades swimming against...
It is rare that one comes across an original journal article title that one HAS to click on and read. For instance, my favorite title of all time has been Alison Gopnik's article titled "Explanation as Orgasm." Not only is this a catchy title, it also make a profound...
In which I examine OpenAI's much-hyped "Study Mode" and contrast it with a couple of real research-based approaches. The differences are telling. Read on… OpenAI recently announced “Study Mode” for ChatGPT with considerable fanfare, claiming it was built “in...
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. I remember when “x” was just the “unknown” – the variable that we needed to compute. It could be anything, but also knowable. Now “x” is a toxic wasteland. I remember when Grok was a lovely word, created by Heinlein, back in the...
A recent study by Neil Selwyn, Marita Ljungqvist, and Anders Sonesson titled When the Prompting Stops begins with GenAI's beguiling offer to educators: "What can I do for you?" But what unfolds isn't a story of seamless automation—it's a story of repair. Drawing on...
Over the years, our column series in TechTrends has explored the intersections of creativity, education, and emerging technologies. Over the past year, we’ve explored a wide range of perspectives on GenAI through interviews with leading thinkers like Ethan Mollick,...
I was recently invited to the 17th annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (EDULEARN25) in Palma, Spain. Getting to visit beautiful Palma, Mallorca, speaking with 800+ educators from across the world... what could be more awesome? At...
Education by Design: Synthesizing Learning Experiences with AIDCI 691: Fall 2025 | Thursdays 9 - 11:45, Tempe CampusInstructor: Punya Mishra Calling all creative risk-takers! This graduate-level course explores how design, as both a way of thinking and as a...
Summary: In which I explore why tinkering—messy, creative, often undervalued and overlooked—is not only a valid way to approach teaching, but perhaps one of the most honest. My friend Josh Brake recently wrote a Substack post (Don't tinker with AI in the classroom)...
Summary: In which I explore three sticky metaphors—digital plastic, curriculum-shaped objects, and the endlessness of edge cases—and how they illuminate the risks of AI-powered education tools that look like learning but fail to teach. In a previous blog post (The...
A few months ago, the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation at Arizona State University hosted the 2025 Yidan Prize Conference. This conference was both a celebration of my colleague Micky Chi’s receipt of the 2023 Yidan Prize for Education...
I've been experimenting with AI-assisted coding for a while now—in fact my first attempt was back in early 2023. Since then I have engaged in multiple explorations using AI to transform concepts and intuitions directly into functional code. This approach bypasses...
One of blogging's greatest pleasures, often unspoken, are the truly serendipitous connections one makes. Not networking in the conventional sense, but unexpected encounters with people who find something on my website that connects with them and they reach out. These...
I am a huge fan of Arthur Brooks' regular columns in The Atlantic where he writes about meaning, love, and happiness, with twin goals, "to understand these parts of life more deeply, and impart to others whatever understanding I can glean." I appreciate his insights...
This past spring semester I taught (with Nicole Oster and Lindsey McCaleb) a masters/doctoral seminar on Human Creativity x AI in Education. I had wanted to write this post after our last class meeting over a month and a half ago—but travel and life kept getting in...
Bill Atkinson was someone I had never met. But he changed my life. I learned of Bill's passing a couple of days ago. It was not that I had thought about Bill a lot but the news of his death brought back memories and a recognition of the critical role he had played in...