Once in a while, you come across a piece of writing that doesn’t just make you think—it makes you rethink. It rearranges the furniture in your head, putting things together in ways you hadn’t considered but now can’t unsee. Charles Stross’s essay, “Dude, You Broke the...
What Arizona’s New AI School Gets Wrong (Hint: Everything)
Two pieces of news caught my attention this week. The first was the passing of Lee Shulman, a giant in educational research, whose profound understanding of teaching and learning shaped generations of educators - including myself. The second was the approval of a new...
Lee Shulman (1938 – 2024)
The news of Lee Shulman's passing has led me to reflect on the profound impact he has had on my career and worldview, despite our paths crossing in person just once. While we never formally collaborated, our academic journeys shared a fascinating connection through...
Mairéad Pratschke On GenAI, Creativity, Culture and the Future of Learning
Over the years, our column series in TechTrends has explored the evolving relationship between technology, creativity, and education. Recently, we've been particularly focused on understanding how generative AI is reshaping teaching and learning through conversations...
AMA with Digital Promise: An AI-opening Discussion
I recently had the pleasure of participating in Digital Promise's inaugural AI Education Exchange "Ask Me Anything" series, hosted by Kelly McNeil. This was my first LinkedIn AMA and was great fun, in large part due to the team that helped set it up and the broader...
Of Stochastic Parrots and Drunk Interns: My Chat with Win Coalition
I recently sat down with Ryan Gray and Robin Bryce of Yavapai College for Win Coalition's What's Next Speaker Series. Regular readers of this blog will know exactly what I must have talked about - no surprises here! We dove into AI, education, and where all this is...
Perspectives on Global Learning: SLL at the GLOW Conference:
I joined my Silver Lining for Learning (SLL) co-hosts - Chris Dede, Curt Bonk, and Lydia Cao (with Yong Zhao unable to attend due to travel) - to deliver a keynote at the Global Learning for an Open World Conference. SLL has been a labor of love over the past five...
AI’nt Fair: Why AI May Make Learning Gaps Wider
What is the relationship between AI and human creativity? Will AI supercharge human innovation, amplifying our ability to discover and invent? Or will it replace human ingenuity altogether? Or are we entering a hybrid future where humans and AI combine in unexpected...
To thine own mind be true: Understanding cultural technologies, from cave walls to ChatGPT
For almost 12 years now we have been writing a column series for the journal TechTrends, exploring the intersection of technology, creativity, and learning. Recently, my colleagues and I have been diving deep into generative AI through conversations with scholars like...
On rejection: A mini-rant about current academic scholarship
It started with a rejection. That's nothing new - we academics collect rejections like kids collect Pokemon cards (or whatever it is that they collect these days). But rejection, if it must come, must be for the right reasons. This particular rejection hit...
AI’s Honey Trap: Why AI Tells Us What We Want to Hear
Leon Furze's blog post about AI sycophancy popped into my feed yesterday and got me thinking. In his post (worth reading in full) he pointed to some striking research from Anthropic showing how AI systems tend to agree with humans, even when the humans are wrong. The...
Mind Games: When AI Learns to Read Us
I had recently written about NotebookLM's podcast feature ["NotebookLM's Viral Secret"] and how eerily human it sounds. My friend Sean Leahy, fellow podcaster and futurist, pointed out the delicious irony: here's an AI deliberately adding hesitations, casual "umms,"...
New Course | Human Creativity x AI in Education: A Transdisciplinary Exploration by Design
DCI 691 (Spring 2025)Human Creativity x AI in Education: A Transdisciplinary Exploration by DesignInstructor Dr. Punya Mishra (punya[AT]asu.edu)Mondays 9 – 11:45 Tempe Short description This graduate-level course examines the dynamic interplay between human creativity...
Many Voices, One Song: Orchestrating Polyphonic Learning
In music, polyphony describes a texture where multiple independent melodic voices interweave to create something greater than the sum of its parts. The philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin expanded this idea to human discourse, seeing it as a way for multiple voices and...
Announcing AIR|GPT: A New Podcast
I'm excited to share that I'm part of a new monthly podcast focused on generative AI in education (AIR|GPT) alongside some great colleagues and friends: Helen Crompton, Caroline Fell-Kurban, Liz Kolb, and Ruben Puentedura. The podcast is structured as an informal yet...
“They’re Not Allowed to Use That S**t”: AI’s Rewiring of Human Connection
I recently participated in a panel discussion organized by the Center for American Progress. Our conversation focused on the emerging impact of generative AI in classrooms. During the Q&A session, someone posted the following question: I am a designer / engineer...
Center for American Progress Webinar: AI in Education
I had the pleasure, this morning, of participating in a panel discussion organized by the Center for American Progress, titled Leveraging Technology To Equip K-12 Students for Success. Although the title covered a broad view of technology, our focus was specifically...
Building Character: When AI Plays Us
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." These words from Martin Luther King Jr. speak to something fundamentally human – the belief that...
Beyond Quick Fixes: What Teacher Prep Really Needs
The Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) has a new report out, titled "AI is Evolving, but Teacher Prep is Lagging: A First Look at Teacher Preparation Program Responses to AI." This report, which you can read in its entirety here, raises important questions...
Chatting Alone: AI and the (Potential) Decline of Open Digital Spaces
Note: The image above is inspired by the cover of Time Magazine's 1983 Person of the Year issue - at the dawn of the personal computer age. Created using Adobe Photoshop and composed in Keynote Angela Gunder reached out to me recently about a project that she is...
Kern You Believe It? A Typographical Tango with AI
As someone who enjoys playing with images, words, and typography, I'm always seeking new ways to generate ideas. I recently tried an experiment: collaborating with an AI language model (Claude) on a series of typographical designs. It all started after I had created...
From Clairvoyant Fish to Static Earths: Scientific Dialogues with GenAI
In my previous post (From Shortcuts to Simulations: Two Contrasting Uses of AI in Higher Education), I shared how my colleague Jim ingeniously used AI to prepare for a difficult conversation about academic integrity. Today, I want to explore another fascinating...
From Shortcuts to Simulation: Two Contrasting Uses of AI in Higher Education
It is almost a cliché to say that generative AI can be both a challenge and an opportunity in education. Here's a story that captures this duality perfectly, showcasing two different approaches to how generative AI can be used in educational contexts, one ethically...
My (small) Role in ASU’s AI Evolution: New Report and Ethical Evaluation Framework
Arizona State University continues to push boundaries. I'm excited to share two recent developments that intersect with my collaborative work at ASU over the past few years. These initiatives showcase our institution's commitment to leveraging AI responsibly while...
Tech Integration Models and GenAI: Podcast Episode (Part II)
Last week, I shared information about my participation in the Superspeaks | Microsoft EDU podcast on the BAM Radio Network. The discussion focused on technology integration frameworks in the context of Generative AI, featuring a panel of educational technology...
NotebookLM’s Viral Secret: It’s All in Our Heads
Google's recent release of NotebookLM has stirred up quite a buzz, particularly its podcast feature. At first glance, it might not seem revolutionary—after all, we've had AI tools that can engage with uploaded documents for a while now. And it does not require...
Turing’s Tricksters: How AI Hijacks Our Social Instincts
In a recent article in The Atlantic (Shh, ChatGPT. That’s a Secret), Lila Shroff delves into the surprising willingness of people to share intimate details with AI chatbots. To be clear, this did not come as a surprise. Readers of this blog will know this is something...
From ChatGPT to Chats Devroop: Ed Tech & Time Travel in South Africa
This past week I was in Durban, South Africa presenting at the Innovations in the Science of the Teaching and Learning (ISOTL) Conference 2024: Bridging Ethics, Equity, and Innovation in Higher Education, organized by the University of KwaZulu-Natal. It was a pretty...
Digital Shadows: AI Scripts a Different Curriculum
As we continue to grapple with the hype and transformative potential of generative AI in education, I find myself revisiting a point I've made before: the most significant impacts of this technology may not be within the classroom walls, but in the world that...
Unlocking Creativity: Dr. Anna Abraham on Interdisciplinarity, AI, and Human Innovation
The advent, adoption and rapid evolution of generative AI has raised many questions about how we think about creativity (human and machine), and its impact on learning. As part of our ongoing series in TechTrends, my colleagues and I have been exploring these issues...