Making connections between the movie The Prestige, and the design of 2 activities to build trust and a shared vision in teams... As I have settled down at ASU and the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, my responsibilities have grown as well. I started as...
Wordcloud created from all the words in the wikipedia page for "mathematics education" What does a teacher need to know to intelligently integrate technology in their teaching? Or better still, what is it that teachers need to know to become effective...
I have always been intrigued by the manner in which everyday ideas get "mathematicized" (if that's a word). For instance, the other day, on a bus-stop by my office I noticed an equation written on the wall. I have no idea why it was there, but...
I was interviewed recently by Mark Brodie of KJZZ.org for a story titled: STEM Vs. STEAM: Educators Urge Adding The Arts To Classrooms. You can listen to the interview on their page by clicking on the link above, or the MP3 below. My piece comes in at around the 3:14...
The US department of Education recently released a policy brief, titled: Advancing Educational Technology in Teacher Preparation. As they describe it This policy brief identifies key challenges and solutions to the effective integration of technology in teacher...
I had recently posted a video of my talk fall Doctoral Research Forum for the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College on the ASU West campus. As I had written in my post, "I thought it best to speak about the role of theory in research. This is something that...
Note: There are two key updates / correction to this post The first has to do with a couple of things that I either got wrong, or rushed over. More about that at Update on "The TPACK story" or "Oops!"The second has to do with an update to the diagram itself that came...
Figure 1. “We are a way for the universe to know itself” - Carl SaganScience is one of the most powerful ways to engage with the beauty of the universe.We use science to understand the cosmos and, in the process,find beauty in our understandings and...
The TPACK framework is a theoretical framework that seeks to influence practice. And most gratifyingly (for Matt Koehler and myself) it appears to have had a significant impact in that area. That said, the field lacked concrete, rich examples of TPACK in...
The Deep-Play research group started as an informal group of faculty and graduate students at Michigan State University, mostly my advisees. It has now grown to include Arizona State University and a couple of people there. Of course my advisees...
Paris has been on my mind for the last 24 hours (as it has been for many others around the world). I have been lucky to have had the opportunity to spend some time in the city - and Paris is one of my favorite places in the world. Paris, anyway you look at it (a new...
Why do anything at all? This blog post is a collection of videos and images that I have collected over time that speak to the pointlessness of trying to find an answer to this question and how one question, even if answered, leads to many more. This is the kind of...
Over the past couple of years my research team (the Deep-Play Research group) and I have been writing an on-going series of articles about rethinking technology and creativity for the 21st century. Published in the journal TechTrends, these articles have been great...
An amazing presentation by Manjul Bhargava (Fields medal winner in Mathematics) to school children in India. See how he effortlessly combines poetry, nature, music and mathematics. Watch an excerpt on YouTube below or the complete video here....
I am a huge fan of Stateside with Cynthia Canty, a radio show on Michigan Radio. So imagine my excitement when I was interviewed by her about my ongoing exhibition (Deep-Play: Creativity in Math & Art through Visual Wordplay) at the MSU Museum. The interview was...
I have been creating ambigrams for years now... and I feel extremely lucky that what started as a personal interest and passion has led to some wonderful experiences and learning. These include a series of articles on the mathematics behind these visual designs and...
Matt Koehler and I recently participated on a webinar titled Teachers as Designers of Technology, Pedagogy, and Content (TPACK) organized by edWeb.net and Commonsense Education. We had over 200+ viewers from all over the world (New Zeeland, Israel, Morroco, Canada...
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...
The 5th floor of Erickson Hall is a fun place to be. Typically a bunch of graduate students hang out there, working on their readings, talking shop and in general having a good time. For some reason, last week, I promised Josh Rosenberg that I would write a poem for...
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...
How do exemplary teachers incorporate creativity in their teaching? In this dissertation study, Danah Henriksen interviewed National Teacher of the Year award winners (and finalists), to better understand their beliefs, interests, and practices involving creative...
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...
Matt Koehler and I are co-editors for an ongoing series of articles "From Research to Practice" for Education Matters, an educational magazine published by Educational Technology & Management Academy (ETMA). ETMA is non-profit organization based in New Delhi...
Design is about engineering. It is about art. And most importantly it is about the psychology of individuals and groups and their interactions with artifacts. I am always on the lookout for examples of good (or bad) design. Sadly I too often come across the latter...
TPACK Newsletter, Issue #18: December 2013 Welcome to the eighteenth edition of the (approximately bimonthly) TPACK Newsletter! TPACK work is continuing worldwide. This document contains recent updates to that work that we hope will be interesting and useful to you,...
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...
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)...
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...
Back in 1986, Anand Narasimhan and I wrote a short story titled "We all fall down," that was published the popular-science magazine Science Today. Science Today, edited by Mukul Sharma who wrote science fiction himself, was maybe the only outlet where you could...
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...