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...
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...
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...
Imagine a world where tape recorders fool beavers, triangles tell stories, and AI convinces us it's sentient. Welcome to reality—where our cognitive biases are colliding with technology in ways we're only beginning to understand. In this post, I focus on our tendency...
I recently had the privilege of participating in a webinar hosted by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) on the topic of "How teachers can use AI effectively." The session was described as follows Supporters of AI argue it has the...
What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet—William Shakespeare We propose that a 2 month, 10 man (sic) study of artificial intelligence be carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New...
I have been thinking of pencils lately. Pencils in the context of AI. What if pencils were the latest technological change to hit our world? How would we as educators respond? Would we worry about children using them ethically? What about cheating: erasing answers and...
Technologies give and they take away. This was poignantly highlighted in a recent article by Lisa Lieberman in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled "AI and the Death of Student Writing." The subtitle says it all: "The move away from true hands-on scholarship seems...
Note: This post originates from collaboration and discussions between Melissa, Punya, and Nicole. However, it is written from Nicole’s point of view as a current student, reflecting our efforts to explore student perspectives when considering the integration of AI in...
Note: This is the next post in the shared blogging experiment with Melissa Warr and Nicole Oster. This time we question what and how we should be teaching about generative AI. The core idea and first draft came from Melissa, to which Nicole and I added revisions and...
Over two years ago we started a Learning Futures Collaborative focusing on the role of Artificial Intelligence in Education (The AI in Ed LFC). I like to emphasize the fact that we started the LFC BEFORE ChatGPT was released into the world. We were ahead of the curve....
I was recently invited as a guest on the 3Ps in a Pod, a podcast from Arizona Institute for Education and the Economy at Northern Arizona University and the Arizona K12 Center. I joined hosts Dr. Chad Gestson and Dr. LeeAnn Lindsey to discuss a topic that has been on...
16 years ago, Matt Koehler and I were invited to present a Keynote at the Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education (SITE) conference. That keynote changed our lives (link to YouTube video). I was invited back again this year for the same. A lot has...
Note: Image above created using Adobe Firefly, Photoshop and composed in Keynote. A few years ago, I had the pleasure of connecting with author Dr. Phoebe Wagner through the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University. We discussed her...
The Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education (SITE) conference has been an integral part of my professional journey for over two decades. My first presentation at SITE was back in 2001 with Matt Koehler and through the years, SITE has played a pivotal...
It is natural, if you have been working in a field for a while, and have been somewhat successful, that some accolades will come your way, just by dint of being around long enough. As Bing Chat wrote, when asked to create a funny, self-deprecating profile of me in the...
Should we tip machines for the work they do for us? Does that question even make sense? What follows is a reflection on metaphors, technology, deceptive design, AI and more... Read on. Metaphors and more In her book God, Human, Animal, Machine, Meghan O’Gieblyn...
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...
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...
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...
Here is the title and abstract for a book review that was just published in the Irish Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning Preparing Ourselves for Artificial Intelligence: A Review of The Alignment Problem and God, Human, Animal, Machine Abstract: In this article,...
A few weeks back, Sean Leahy – friend, tech aficionado, futurist, and the co-host of the Learning Futures Podcast – reached out to me via email with an intriguing proposal. He was playing with the concept of harnessing generative AI to craft Halloween stories. The aim...
I recently received an email from dean recommending this post titled Thoughts on Now and Then by Andrew Hickey. In this extended essay Hickey provides his thoughts on the new Beatles remake, Now and Then. The essay is a thoughtful and loving analysis of human...
In a previous post I explored some of the visual capabilities of ChatGPT. This is a continuation of those experiments, where ChatGPT helped me identify the date and time of a solar eclipse based on a photo I took decades ago, as a graduate student at the University of...
I have been blogging for 15 years now, but I have had a website for much longer than that. I built my first website back in 1998 just as I was graduating from UIUC and entering the academic job market. I still remember the URL (www.uiuc.edu/~pmishra). I designed a...
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...
Good design cares about details. Good design is humane. Bad design is neither. Designers must bring this attention to detail and humanity to every aspect of their work. And this applies even the invisible parts. This, caring for the "invisible" details, is captured in...
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...
I found out about Vinit Masram's passing a week or so go. I did not know Vinit personally, having met him just once, at IDC's Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2020. But the news of his death hit me hard. I had been a fan of his work for a long time - having stumbled on...
Lovers of mathematics relish challenges, enjoying the manipulation of numbers and geometrical figures, seeking and creating patterns. Their fascination sometimes extends into language and other seemingly unrelated domains. An intriguing example of visual wordplay,...