Figure/Ground ambigram for Educational Psychology by Punya Mishra It has been a while coming, but finally the 3rd Edition of the Handbook of Educational Psychology is finally here. We have a chapter in it about the manner in which digital and networking technologies...
Posts related to: Philosophy
Creativity, Technology & Teacher Education
Danah Henriksen and I recently edited a special issue of the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education (Volume 23, Number 3, July 2015) devoted to Creativity, Technology and Teacher Education. This special issue is organized thematically around eight articles...
Interview in Educational Technology Journal
I was recently interviewed by the journal Educational Technology: The magazine for managers of change in education as a part of their series Q & A with Ed Tech Leaders. The interviews are conducted by contributing editors, Susan M. Fulgham and Michael F....
My ambigram design in Brain Games TV show
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...
21st century learning, TPACK and other fun stuff
I have been invited to participate in the 2014 Educational Technology Summit: Empowering Educators to Enhance Student Learning in the Digital Era. This conference is being organized by Common Sense Media, Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands, & the LEAD Commission. I...
A decade of running, some thanks
Ten years ago I participated in my first formal race. It was the 2004 Capital City River Run and back then it was a 10 mile run. Today (September 20, 2014), I ran my 11th race, the 2014 Capital City River Run - now a half marathon. It has been a decade of running. In...
Art is a lie… that tells the truth
Picasso famously said, "Art is a lie that tells the truth." This design below is my attempt to represent this quote - at least the first part of the quote. Of course, as most things go, it is not clear whether Picasso ever actually said these specific words. But...
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...
Vijay Iyer, polymathy and trans-disciplinary creativity
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...
Perceiving & Patterning as skills essential for creativity
We have been writing a series of articles for Tech Trends titled Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21st Century. You can see the full list here. One of the key focus areas of these articles is on what we call trans-disciplinary thinking i.e. a set of...
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...
What is the value of a theoretical framework?
One question that all doctoral students dread (and rightfully so) is "What is your theoretical framework?" Why, they wonder (silently), why do we need a framework? This question popped up recently in, of all places, Facebook. Pilar Quezzaire, a graduate of our MAET...
Of garbage cans and psychological media
This has been a day of sad news from Stanford University. I blogged about the passing away of Dr. Nalini Ambady (see blog post here). I will digress a bit before I describe the second piece of news because the connection to me (and my work) is much more salient. Back...
10 seconds is all it takes … to judge a teacher
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)...
Banksy’s biggest trick OR why I hate art museums
I have been a fan of Banksy, the subversive British street artist, for a long time. I love the visuals he comes up with, the subversive quality of his art and most importantly his ability to take art out of the galleries into the real world. His most recent trick,...
Seeing mathematics everywhere…
Dame Kathleen Ollernshaw was deaf since the age of 8. Despite this she had an amazing life as a mathematician, amateur astronomer, politician (she served as mayor of Manchester as well as in the Thatcher administration) and mother. To learn more about her read this...
A NEW definition of creativity: Next article in series
The latest in our series Rethinking Technology and Creativity in the 21st Century is now available. The article was co-authored with Danah Henriksen (and the Deep-Play Research Group) and it titled: A NEW approach to defining and measuring creativity. In this article...
The search for pattern, beauty & intelligent life…
Connecting birds nests to "crop circles under the ocean" leading to some thoughts on perception, beauty and finding intelligent life in the universe (or maybe even on this planet). The other day I found a bird's nest on my front lawn. Most probably it had fallen down...
Design thinking, some resources
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:...
Trans-disciplinary creativity takes root (slowly)
I wanted to bring attention to two articles that came across my desk today. The first was in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled Creativity: a Cure for the Common Curriculum on efforts at range of universities seeking "to train students in how innovative thinkers...
Creativity Symposium at SITE2013
We just completed our symposium at SITE titled: Breaking Disciplinary Boundaries in 21st Century Learning: Creative Teaching with Digital Technologies. The symposium consisted of 7 presentations followed a summary by Teresa Foulger (of Arizona State University). In...
Of Art and algorithms: New article
The latest in our series Rethinking Technology and Creativity in the 21st Century is now available. The article was co-authored with Aman Yadav of Purdue University (and the Deep-Play Research Group) and focuses on the art and science of computational thinking. We...
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...
On performing one’s identity: A thought inspired by Jonathan Miller
It is difficult, in a world buffeted by change, to know what to hold on to. I often wonder about this when thinking of teaching and learning, when thinking of the speed at which technology is changing the world we live in... What do we hold on to? What do we let go?...
Square Peg, Round Hole, Good Engineering (new article on creativity & learning)
Our latest article on the series Technology, Creativity & 21st Century Learning is now available (link and the complete reference given below). Co-authored with Colin Terry, Dr. Danah Henriksen, and the Deep-Play Research group, this focuses on creativity in the...
Learning landscapes, special issue on creativity
My friend Teresa Foulger at Arizona State University informed me about the fact that the journal LEARNing Landscapes has a special issue on creativity. I had not heard of the journal before and I was pleasantly surprised by the articles in this special issue....
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...
Dancing with words, Good/Evil in a new ambigram context
Many years ago I constructed an ambigram for the words "good" and "evil." The idea came to me while waiting for a traffic light to turn green. The memory of it is so vivid in my mind that even today when I come to that particular intersection I remember that moment...
TPACK goes to graduate school
This is a paper that had come out a while ago, and I just didn't get a chance to post it (actually I just forgot). Anyway, here it is: Mishra, P., Koehler, M. J., Zellner, A., & Kereluik, K. (2012). Thematic considerations in integrating TPACK in a graduate...
On Being (in)Disciplined: New journal article on creativity & learning
I just found out that our next article in the series on Technology and Creativity is now published. You can find a link and the complete reference below. Written this time with Dr. Danah Henriksen, with help from the Deep-Play Research group, in this paper we extend...