Many years ago I got bitten by the Ambigram bug and before I knew it I had created hundreds! This was of course long before Dan Brown and Angels and Demons made ambigrams wildly popular. It has been fun to see what was once a fringe activity take on a wider...
Posts related to: Worth Reading
Palindromic poetry: Falling Snow
A few weeks ago I had written about an email that I received from an eighth grader in Colorado. Jake, a budding poet, was interested in learning more about me in the context of some palindromic poetry I had written many years ago. I wrote back to Jake (you can see the...
Rethinking Ed Tech Research…
I have been a huge fan of Don Norman ever since I first ran into his book on the Psychology of Everyday Things (which he later renamed as The Design of Everyday Things, and the story behind that name change is worth reading as an excellent example of design). Don...
The gift that keeps on giving, or Why I love the web
I recently received this email: Dear Mr. Mishra, I am currently working on a poetry research project for school, and one of the requirements is researching five different poets. While looking for people who wrote palindromic poetry, I found your website and decided to...
Educational Technology @ MSU
The Educational Psychology and Educational Technology program at the College of Education at Michigan State University offers a variety of programs in educational technology. The College of Education is one of highest ranked colleges of education in the country (see...
April 2, 2011… O frabjous day!
To understand the significance of April 2, 2011, I have to go back 28 years, back to the summer of 1983. I had just finished 10th grade, and that summer I took a trip to the hills of North India, as a part of a social work volunteer effort. I remember sleeping on the...
When tech comes first: The Khan Academy as leading pedagogical change
As I go around the country talking about the TPACK framework, one of the questions that is always put to me is, about which comes first when planning a lesson, content, pedagogy or technology. The standard answer is that content comes first since it is only after we...
TPACK & Creativity at Cedar Rapids
I had a wonderful day at the Grant Woods Area Education Agency at Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I was invited there by Andy Crozier and his team as a part of their 21st Century Learning Institute. I spent the day with 50+ teachers, library media specialists, and administrators...
TPACK underpins Aussie Teacher Ed Restructuring
Dr. Matthew Kearney (who was featured in my recent post on student constructed iVideos) just wrote to inform me about a teacher preparation project currently underway in Australia. The Teaching Teachers for the Future (TTF) project is a $7.8 million project ... aimed...
iVideos from Australia, the 2011 edition
Last June I had posted a note (Teacher as filmmaker: An update from down under) about the iVideos created by students from the University of Technology, Sydney (under the guidance of Dr. Matthew Kearney). iVideos or "idea videos" are short films often 2 minutes (or...
SITE 2011, the fun stuff
I had posted earlier about the paper presentations I was involved with during the recently concluded SITE conference at Nashville. Matt Koehler and I were co-Program Chairs for the conference, and sadly Matt was sick and had to miss the trip. In the photo below the...
Creativity, TPACK and Trans-disciplinary Learning for the 21st Century
Over the past few years my scholarly focus has shifted into areas related to teacher creativity and transdisciplinary learning. I see this as being the next step in my research work. Though I have been thinking quite a bit about this, have applied to to my teaching...
MSU college of Ed leads US News rankings!
The 2012 U.S. News rankings of graduate programs in education have been released and there is good news for our college and department. Overall, the College of Education at Michigan State is ranked 17th which is where we were last year. It appears that our reputation...
TPACK Newsletter #9, March 2011
TPACK Newsletter, Issue #9: March 2011 Special Spring 2011 Conference Issue Below please find a listing of TPACK-related papers/sessions that will be presented at the SITE conference in March in Nashville, Tennessee; at the AERA annual meeting in April in New Orleans,...
TPACK & 21st Century Learning @ AACTE
I was recently in San Diego for the annual conference of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education. I had served as a chair of the Innovation & Technology Committee for a while, and the committee invited me to participate in two different sessions....
TPACK Newsletter 8 (Feb 2011)
TPACK Newsletter, Issue #8: February 2011 Welcome to a new year and to the eighth edition of the TPACK Newsletter! Please forgive our long delay in getting this “mega-issue” to you. We’ll do a lot of “catching up” with what has been happening with TPACK worldwide in...
It’s all Greek to me: TPACK commercial
Last summer Matt and I created a couple of TPACK commercials for a video presentation we had been invited to make at ISTE in Denver. You can see the commercials here and here and the entire video here. Recently, Spyros Doukakis, a PhD candidate at the University of...
Research conduct: The movie
From Ken Friedman & the PhD Design listserv: The current issue of The Scientist has a story on an interactive film that helps research students and early career researchers to understand and navigate the perils of research misconduct. Highlights: "The Lab is a...
This is your brain on technology!
May years ago I wrote an essay titled On becoming a website. It was about my experience on teaching online and I suggested somewhat facetiously that in order to be a good teacher online I needed to actually "become" the course website! I started the essay by...
Oh, Shi(f)t! Only in India…
I just came across this sign on a wall in Bhubaneswar. Check it out, nothing less than "Tension free shiting!" All you have to do is dial a number! Here is the sign cropped close Here is the complete sign. It is part of an advertisement for a packing and moving...
TPACK & Games @ Drexel
I am headed to Drexel University to give a talk at the Drexel Learning Games Network seminar series. The DLGN is the brainchild of Aroutis Foster, former graduate student, now rising star academic and researcher. As the DLGN website says The Drexel Learning Games...
TPACK @ PLP: cool webinars, great resource
Leigh Wolf pointed me to an fantastic resource for teachers and educators interested in learning more about TPACK. These are a series of online interactive webinars titled TPACK Fridays and are organized by the Powerful Learning Practice (plpnetwork.com). What is...
Harris, Mishra & Koehler, republished
Back in 2009, Judi Harris, Matt Koehler and I published in a piece in the Journal of Research on Technology in Education. That article has now been included in a book, titled: Considerations on Technology & Teachers: The Best of JRTE, edited by Lynne Schrum, and...
Vote for Leigh
Leigh Wolf, is many things: techie, teacher, foodie, and friend. She is also a doctoral student in our program and coordinator of our Master's in Educational Technology Program. Recently Leigh was nominated and short-listed for the Learning without Frontiers awards in...
Happy New Year
For the past couple of years now, our family has been creating new year's greetings using stop-motion video. This year was no exception. Here it is (on Vimeo) http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=18164777 A very wonderful holidays and a very happy new year to all of...
Subversion, literacy & TPACK, new article
Kristen Kereluik, Matt Koehler and I just published an article in The California Reader: A publication of the California Reading Association. The complete citation and abstract is as follows: Kereluik, K., Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2010, Winter). On learning...
Education in India & the role of the Azim Premji Foundation
Just before the Thanksgiving break, the College of Education and Michigan State University had the opportunity to host Dilleep Ranjekar and Anurag Behar, Co-CEO's of the Azim Premji Foundation. The Azim Premji Foundation is a not-for-profit organization with a vision...
Models of design, creativity and more…
The Dubberly Design Office has created a series of models of innovation, play and design. These are terrific resources and I just found out about them by chance. I see these as being quite significant in the classes I teach, including CEP817: Learning Technology by...
TPACK & Social Media at Bloomfield Hills
I spent a two days a couple of weeks ago with the faculty and leadership of Bloomfield Hills School District. The first day was a workshop on teaching, technology and creativity with the faculty of Model High School and Bowers Academy. Leigh and I had been invited...
The mysterious pentagon… explained?
Around 2 weeks ago I posted a note about a "pentagon" I saw in some boiling lentils in my kitchen. There have been some interesting responses to this... but before I get to that, here is the original image, if you missed the original posting: Interestingly enough, a...