Go Beyond

The People Behind the Conversation

Five busy academics. No funding. No institutional support. Just a shared belief that thinking together, in public, every week, is worth the effort.

Silver Lining for Learning has always been a collective effort. What started as a group call in the first week of the pandemic became a weekly practice that has now outlasted the crisis that launched it. The hosts bring different expertise, different temperaments, and different networks — and that combination is what gives the series its range.

Current Hosts

Chris Dede

Senior Research Fellow

Harvard Graduate School of Education

Curt Bonk

Professor

Instructional Systems Technology, Indiana University

Lydia Cao

Assistant Professor

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), Department of Curriculum, Teaching & Learning, University of Toronto

Punya Mishra

Director, Innovative Learning Futures

Learning Engineering Institute, Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching & Learning Innovation, Arizona State University

Yong Zhao

Foundation Distinguished Professor

School of Education, University of Kansas

Founding Hosts

Shuangye Chen (Professor, East China Normal University (Editor, ECNU ROE)) and Scott McLeod (Professor, University of Colorado) were part of the original group that launched SLL in March 2020. Both helped shape the series in its formative months before stepping away. Their contribution to the founding vision is gratefully acknowledged.

Acknowledgments

SLL would be nothing without the generosity of its guests — hundreds of people from over 30 countries who gave their time freely, often joining from across the globe at improbable hours of the day and night, because they believed this conversation mattered. Teachers, researchers, designers, policymakers, students, entrepreneurs — every one of them made the show richer than we could have made it alone.

Thanks also to the many listeners, viewers, and community members who have shown up week after week, asked hard questions in the chat, shared episodes with colleagues, and used SLL in their own teaching and research. You are the reason the series outlived the emergency that created it.

The analysis and website you've just explored were built collaboratively with AI (Claude, by Anthropic). The analytical sensibility, editorial judgment, and all decisions about what to present and how are entirely the researcher's. The AI served as a building partner, not an author.

Get in Touch

If you've used this data, found something interesting in the archive, used SLL episodes in your teaching, or just want to continue the conversation — we'd love to hear from you.

punya.mishra@asu.edu

SLL is still airing new episodes. Visit silverliningforlearning.org for the latest.