A couple of weeks ago I was invited to give a keynote at the Frances Willson Thompson Critical Issues Conference on Generative AI in Education. It was great to go back to Michigan even if for a super short trip. One of the pleasures of the visit was catching up with...
Generative AI: Will history repeat or (just) rhyme
As generative AI continues to reshape our world, we're faced with a crucial question: Will we repeat the mistakes we made with previous technologies or will this time be something different? George Santayana famously warned, "Those who cannot remember the past are...
Generative AI, Teacher Knowledge and Educational Research: Bridging Short- and Long-Term Perspectives.
I am pleased to share our latest article in our ongoing column series for TechTrends on the topics of technology creativity and education. Over the past few months we have focused on generative AI, through conversations with thought leaders such as Chris Dede...
Media, Cognition & Society through History: A Mapping
If oral cultures prioritize memory and print cultures emphasize systematic organization, what types of knowledge will AI systems foster? Marie Heath and I wrote this line in a chapter that is currently in press. But the idea underlying this quote has been with me for...
It HAS to hallucinate: The true nature of LLM’s
Though Generative AI is receiving a great deal of attention lately, I am not entirely sure that the discussions of these technologies and their impact on education and society at large genuinely engage with the true nature of these technologies. In fact I have argued...
Education & the Rise of AI Infuencers
I have been thinking hard about the nature of generative AI, what sets it apart from other technologies that have come in the past. It seems to me there are two key factors. The first is its ability to engage in dialogue, in natural language and the second are its...
GenAI 2023: Year in Review
A week or so ago I was joined by friends Sean Leahy, Rachna Mathur and Kellie Kreiser on the Learning Futures Podcast. The topic: looking back on a crazy, dynamic, transformative year of generative AI. As is to be expected, we covered a lot of ground in the...
Generative AI is WEIRD!
Note: This blog post was almost entirely written by ChagGPT based on an analysis of a set of images I had uploaded onto it. The image above (Weird AI) is an original typographic design created by me. The background sky was created by Adobe Firefly. To give some...
Keynote Presentation: AI in Education Summit
Note: The image above is the result of a two-stage creative process—done in collaboration with AI. Dall-E was tasked, over multiple iterations, to craft a woodcut-style image, to abstractly capture the idea of AI and education, with dark and light motifs, aiming to...
BAIS: Implicit Bias in AI systems
I don't usually post about articles written by other people (however much I may like the study or the authors) but I am making an exception this time - mainly because I believe that this is a critically important piece of research that deserves wider recognition. In...
Literacy as a Technology: A Conversation with Kyle Jensen about AI, Writing & More
Welcome back to our column series, exploring the nexus of technology, creativity, and education. We've spoken with experts like Chris Dede from Harvard and Ethan Mollick from Wharton, focusing on how AI is reshaping creativity and education. We're in a pivotal era of...
Designing learning in a transformed world: Keynote
I was recently invited to present virtually at The Heart of Innovation Summer Summit, organized by the Heartland Area Education Agency in Iowa. The video of my talk can be seen below. Maybe my first serious keynote talk about generative AI and education. Enjoy...
Teacher Knowledge in the age of ChatGPT and Generative AI
Update March 2024: This paper received the JDLTE Outstanding Research Paper Award recognizing "the single article from the prior volume year with the highest possibility to advance the field of teacher education, based on the criteria of potential impact and...
ChatGPT is a smart, drunk intern: 3 examples
Harry Frankfurt the philosopher passed away, this past Sunday. He was 94. As the NYTimes obituary said, he was... ... a philosopher whose fresh ideas about the human will were overshadowed in the broader culture by his analysis of a kind of dishonesty that he found...
TPACK Handbook, 3rd Edition: Call for proposals
I have been an academic for almost a quarter of a century (longer, if you include my years in graduate school), and it is a bit humbling that the work for which I (and my partner in crime, Matt Koehler) are best known for is the creation of a Venn diagram—which, when...
Creative uses of ChatGPT for Education: A conversation with Ethan Mollick
Ethan Mollick is a professor at the Wharton School of Business and studies and teaches innovation and entrepreneurship. He also leads Wharton Interactive, an effort to democratize education through games and simulations. He is also one of the most innovative users of...
Talk at Fulton School of Engineering
Last August I was invited to speak at an event organized by the Ira Fulton School of Engineering's Learning and Teaching Hub. For some reason I had not posted about it — so better late than never... here it is, a 30 min talk followed by QnA....
TPACK & Philosophy
I often receive emails about the TPACK framework and even though I have not worked in that space for a while, I do feel obligated to respond. That said, I usually do not feel the need to document my responses. Once in a while, however, I get a question that demands a...
On designing aesthetic educational experiences in science
What is the role of beauty (and aesthetics) in science in science education? This is something that I have been interested in for a long time, going back to highschool. Over the years I have built a small body of scholarship around this topic. Sadly, this work does...
We Have Always Been Rhizomatic
Danah Henriksen and I were recently asked to write a foreword for a book titled New Directions in Rhizomatic Learning: From Poststructural Thinking to Nomadic Pedagogy edited by Myint Swe Khine. This was a fun foreword to write and allowed us to explore a range of...
Scaling up the SCALE Instrument
Back in 2017, Carmen Richardson and I wrote an article (Richardson & Mishra, 2017) in which we proposed an instrument (Support of Creativity in Learning Environment: SCALE) designed to assess the ways in which a learning environment supports student...
Krishnamurti & Dewey in the Metaverse
I am writing a paper with Marina Basu about how John Dewey's and Jiddu Krishnamurti's philosophies of education and their implications for learning in increasingly mediated environments. While working on the paper, it struck me that it may be fun to see what Bing Chat...
Gilbert Daniels, the gardener who changed our world
Note: I wrote and submitted this piece as an op-ed to the Indianapolis Star to be published on April 14, 2023, exactly 3 years after they had published Gilbert Daniels' obituary. It would have helped set the record straight about his amazing contribution to the world...
Tools “R” Us: When objects become you
Danah Henriksen shared an article with me recently “When objects become extensions of you.” It is an interesting piece arguing that “Whether they are tools, toys, or mirror reflections, external objects temporarily become part of who we are all the time.” Essentially,...
Bringing Design to Education: Benjamin Cluff Jr. Lecture at BYU McKay School of Education
I was recently invited to present the Benjamin Cluff Jr. Lecture by the dean and faculty at the Brigham Young University, McKay School of Education. I had a short but lovely visit, meeting old friends, and making new ones. We had some wonderful conversations, over...
Good to be back, SITE 2023 New Orleans
The Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education conference has been an important part of my professional life for over two decades. My first presentation at a SITE conference was back in 2001 at Orlando, Florida, with none other than Matt Koehler. For the...
From Crayons to AI: New article (10 years of writing)
Ten years ago, we, The Deep Play Research Group, were invited to write a regular series of articles for this journal exploring the relationship between technology, creativity and learning. To celebrate this anniversary, we decided to write two summary/ synthesis...
Learning styles in the classroom? What BS! (But Bing Chat doesn’t care.)
One of the most enduring myths in education is that of learning styles. I had written about it back in 2009 in a blog post titled: Teaching to learning styles: What hogwash. But it a myth that does not seem to go away, maybe because it seems to have some kind of...
ChatGPT3 is bulls*** artist
Back in 1986 the philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt wrote an essay titled "On bullshit" which he then expanded into a book, published in 2005. Essentially, the essay and the book are a rumination on the distinction between "bullshitters" and "liars." He argues that:...
How to fix your Indian accent using AI
Featured image design © Punya Mishra (background image courtsey PxHere) There are many meanings to the phrase "having a voice." It can mean whether you are present and acknowledged within a space - but most literally it means what you say and how you speak? And...