Punya Mishra’s Web

Image Credit Leeks

As readers of the blog know, Matt Koehler and I work together quite a lot. In fact we just rotate author-order in our papers since it is hard to keep track of individual contributions. (I would like to claim that the cool ideas are mine – but again he is bigger and stronger than me so I don’t often do that, at least not any more.) We are also huge fans of Douglas Adams and his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (which consists of 4 books, something that makes perfect sense if you have ever read Adams). Anyway, a bunch of years ago we decided that we needed to act on our love for this man, and his writings, by citing him in an academic paper. To our great pride, we did it! In fact we started the article with a citation to Adams.

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Candace Figg & Jenny Burson have just released a book titled: Designs for Unpacking Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), making this the second textbook that utilizes the TPACK framework. You can find out more about the Figg & Burson book by going to its website, here; and about the previous textbook by going here.

I haven’t had a chance to read the book as of yet, but from one of the pdfs on the site this is what I could find:

The book introduces you to instructional design for tech-enhanced lessons based on research about teacher knowledge. The knowledge a teacher needs in order to teach has been summarized as the combination of understanding about pedagogy and the content area so that the teacher understands how to use pedagogy in that particular content area (Shulman, 1986). In the last few years, that model has been expanded to include technology, so that a teacher who understands how to teach with technology understands the pedagogy for teaching with the tool and learning with the tool in that content area (Mishra & Koehler, 2006)—called Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK). This book presents the practical applications of what TPACK looks like in daily classroom practice so teachers new to teaching with technology can successfully plan and implement lessons that are tech-enhanced. Therefore, in-depth lesson plans for five models of teaching (Direct Instruction, Direct Instruction using Cooperative Groups in Centers or Concept Mapping, Project-Based Learning, Problem-Based Learning in Collaborative Groups, and DGI) are presented so teachers new to teaching will see exactly how to write up a tech-enhanced lesson. As well, there are a dozen other lesson designs suggested to demonstrate how to sequence activities within these models of teaching.

We had said this before, and maybe it needs to be said again:

The fact that an idea ends up in a textbook means not just that it has been accepted by the field but also that the idea is no longer considered controversial or worthy of debate. A feeling of mustiness comes in the air… A gain in authority goes hand in hand with a rise in sterility and a loss of flexibility. Ideas in textbooks seem to somehow end up as being bullet points, lacking the suppleness and evocative richness of the original ideas. Becoming part of the establishment has its risks.

Maybe it is time for Matt Koehler and me to begin a rebellion against narrow, ivory-tower, academic frameworks that try to contain the complexity of educational technology integration in three overlapping circles

I love how these interconnected pipes called the Intertubes lead to serendipitous discoveries. Here are two videos, the first I went looking for, and the second, fell into my lap, so to speak, due to YouTubes related videos section.

The video I went looking for was based on a delightful book I had picked up at a garage sale a few years ago. “The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics” is a little book (20 pages or so) with an intriguing story-line and its geometrical illustrations. The main character is a straight line who is in love with a dot – but sadly she is more attracted to a wild, unruly squiggle. How the simple line develops his talents and wins the love of the dot is told through whimsical (and mathematically sound) illustrations.

I learned later that the famous animator Chuck Jones had made this into a short film. Here it is (thanks to YouTube).

This is just a wonderful example of how mathematics and art, perception and recognition, creativity and design can come together. This book (and the movie) speak to me at so many different levels. What is most amazing is the ability we humans have to see purpose and meaning in the simplest of lines and curves. So much of art and science depend on this ability to perceive / construct patterns.

Nowhere is this more beautifully (and humorously) illustrated than in this other video I discovered. Written and narrated by Mel Brooks (yes THE Mel Brooks) this animated short film, The Critic, takes a different interpretive stance (crankier and edgier) than the previous narration. That this short animation captures, powerfully how we as humans both seek, and question, the meanings of the patterns we see around us.

I just finished reading parts of Sheri Turkle’s latest book, Simulation and its discontents, and the parallels to what she is writing about and Mel Brook’s Critic are quite strong. The cranky one man in the short recognizes or “sees” meaning is some of the abstract images he sees on the screen and yet he questions their value. The scientists and designers quoted in Turkle’s book echo some of the same concerns.

What is amazing is that the Mel Brooks short was made in 1963, the Chuck Jones movie was made in 1965 and Turkle’s book was published just this year, in 2009!

Just found out from Kathryn Dirkin that a prominent textbook of Educational Technology now features the TPACK framework. The book is titled “Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching” [link to Amazon.com] and is authored by Margaret D. Roblyer and Aaron H Doering. This is not an endorsement of the book (which I haven’t yet seen) though I know that Margaret has been a bestselling author and active in educational technology for many years (this is the fifth edition of the book) and I do know Aaron, having met him most recently at the SITE conference.
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This is an extended piece on the manner in which the web, small pieces loosely joined, can lead to “serendipitous connectabilty” (something I had written about earlier here). All this is situated in a story that connects cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstader, Oriya writer and poet J. P. Das, and the father of non-violence Mahatma Gandhi. This is an interesting story in and of itself, and along the way offers some insights into the nature of the Internet and the psychology of creativity. Quite a lot to fit into on posting but bear with me.

A while ago I blogged about a column by David Brooks in the NYTimes (Flipping the Tech & Ed equation). Brooks described research by Goldin and Katz indicating a “race between technology and education” based on the idea that technology is (by its very nature) skill based. When we add to that the fact that technology is continually changing we are forced to conclude that keeping up with the technology requires continual learning and education.

I recently came across a review of the Goldin and Katz book by Arnold Kling and John Merrifield (you can read the full review here [PDF document]). There was one aspect of the review, about the race between new technologies (or upgraded technologies) and the kinds of education and learning on needs to keep up, that really clicked with me and helped me articulate better some thoughts I have had for a while.
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A while ago I had blogged about a webpage that chronicles how “artists work” (see my posting here). Now I discovered a whole website devoted to it. Check out Daily Routines. They are all interesting to read and the common theme that jumps out, for the most part, is the level of discipline that artistic creativity requires. Very little of the “flash of insight” moment – but lots and lots of hard work.

Here’s Murakami in the Paris Review:

When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 am and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.

Enjoy.

Aroutis Foster and I recently published a chapter in the Handbook of research on effective electronic gaming in education (I had posted about it earlier here). The handbook seeks to provide a comprehensive coverage of the use of electronic games in multiple fields. Complete reference, abstract & link to pdf given below.
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I just finished reading “The reluctant fundamentalist” a novel by Mohsin Hamid over the break. (I had mentioned this novel in another context here). It is a tight, powerful novel, structured as a monologue, (reminiscent of Camus’ The Fall, a fact that few reviewers seem to have noticed), describing the literal and metaphorical journey of a young Pakistani man from a successful student and businessman in America to becoming a “reluctant fundamentalist” back in his home country.

I was reading this novel even as the horrific events of the past few days played out in Mumbai (see this, this and this). In some ways the attacks on Mumbai became a lens through which to interpret the novel, making me somewhat less sympathetic to the novel than I would have been otherwise. Hamid has gone on the record indicating that the views of Changez do not reflect his own – and that Changez is a piece of fiction, a writer’s creation. Though I knew this intellectually, it was emotionally difficult for me to separate the author and the character. This was partly because Changez’s story and that of the author roughly parallel each other – though Hamid quite his high-flying job in the corporate world to become an author (not a Islamic fundamentalist) and partly because I could not but notice the connections between the western educated protagonist in the novel (Changez) and the young men (wearing jeans and designer shirts) who attacked Mumbai.
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Gaurav Bhatnagar is one of my oldest friends – going back to 8th grade in Modern School, Barakhamba Road. He recently published his first book on Mathematics for kids, titled, Get Smart: Maths Concepts, published by Penguin India. The book also has an associated blog – though it is rather sparsely populated with posts at this moment. This makes him the third school friend of mine to have written a mathematics related book. How cool is that! Congratulations Gaurav!

You can read about the other two authors and their book here.

Andrew Sullivan is one of my favorite bloggers, not because I agree with all that he says there is a certain sensibility that emerges as you follow his blog for a while that appeals to me. He has a great piece in The Atlantic Monthly titled Why I blog?. Speaking of ship’s logs (and comparing them to web-logs or blogs) he says:

As you read a log, you have the curious sense of moving backward in time as you move forward in pages—the opposite of a book. As you piece together a narrative that was never intended as one, it seems—and is—more truthful. Logs, in this sense, were a form of human self-correction. They amended for hindsight, for the ways in which human beings order and tidy and construct the story of their lives as they look back on them. Logs require a letting-go of narrative because they do not allow for a knowledge of the ending. So they have plot as well as dramatic irony—the reader will know the ending before the writer did.

Read the entire essay…

Wong, D., Mishra, P., Koehler, M.J., & Adams, S. (2007). Teacher as Filmmaker: iVideos, Technology Education, and Professional Development. To appear in M. Girod & J. Steed (Eds.), Technology in the college classroom. Stillwater, Oklahoma: New Forums Press. Read the rest of this entry »

Sanjay Patel is an animator at Pixar and has come up with a beautifully designed book about Indian gods and goddesses. Read the rest of this entry »

Scott McCloud is one of my favorite people. His book Understanding Comics is just wonderful and I have used it in many of my classes. It is a great way to start a course. Scott made news recently for creating a 38 page comic book to introduce Google’s new browser Chrome to the world. Read the rest of this entry »

I should really visit Salon.com more often. Every time I go there I find something interesting, challenging and thought provoking. My recent foray there led me to a book review written by Laura Miller (The road to Wikipedia). Miller reviews “Reinventing Knowledge: From Alexandria to the Internet” by Ian McNeely and Lisa Wolverton. The book focuses on the “production, preservation and transmission” of knowledge and how that has changed over time, from an oral culture (such as in ancient Greece) to today’s world of the Internet and Web 2.0. Though I haven’t read the book the review has some interesting insights worth thinking about… Read the rest of this entry »

… or just narrow?

I just discovered Britannica blog, a pretty lively virtual space for intelligent discussion. How I had not come across it earlier is a mystery – but again that is the beauty of the web.

Anyway, there is an ongoing discussion there about how the web influences what we do. A provocative argument (based on data) being put forth by James Evans is regarding the influence of the availability of electronic resources on the research process.
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In response to my previous posting titled How artists work, Leigh Wolf pointed out a book (Curious Minds: How a child becomes a scientist). I had not heard of this book before and a quick google search led me to this page. Read the rest of this entry »

While researching my previous post about véjà du and Abraham Wald I came across “The Back of the Napkin Blog” (a.k.a. Digital Roam). This blog is devoted to visual thinking and representation. Very cool and very interesting… well worth a visit. Turns out that there is a posting here about Abraham Wald and his WWII insight. You can read it here: The hole story, What you don’t see will kill you. You can see the author’s page here.

NYTimes article on how publishers are responding to the advent of peer-to-peer sharing of textbook files. Check out First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.

Nice article in the NYTimes (Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?) about today’s generation and how much of their reading happens online (as opposed to reading books). I have seen a change in my reading over time as well. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been catching up on my reading of Slate and came across this gem of an article by Judith Shulevitz titled, The care and feeding of fiction. Shulevitz has written a quasi-review of James Wood’s new book How fiction works and makes we want to read the book itself. Of the many interesting ideas in the article is this wonderful quote that I just had to share:

There is only one recipe—to care a great deal for the cookery – Henry James

A statement that ought to apply to all that we do…

As an aside, it is clear from this essay by Woods that he has a “take no prisoners” style of writing. His take down of most magical realistic writing (which is calls hysterical realism), including Rushdie, Pynchon, DeLillo and Foster Wallace is a must read. This just makes me more confident that the book will be a wonderfully, idiosyncratic, engaging and intelligent read.

Reuters story titled Technology reshapes America’s classrooms. Couple of quotes worth noting:

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There have been many requests for the first chapter of the TPACK Handbook (recently published by AACTE & Routledge). Below is the summary and a link to the pdf version.
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I have been teaching summer course in our master’s program for years now and for the most part have found them to be the most enriching teaching experiences I have had. These are intense 8 hours a day, 5 days a week programs that typically go on for a month. [We are currently experimenting with a hybrid version but that's a story for another day.] I haven’t written much about these programs, despite having taught them multiple times, but for one book chapter that was written many years ago (but for one reason or other was published just last year, in 2007). Read the rest of this entry »

Andrea Francis just emailed me a note about Professor Phillip Parker who is the world’s fastest book author. He has over the past five years over 85,000 books to his name. Read the rest of this entry »

Musings on local newspaper headlines, 2001 A Space Odyssey, media and creativity, and ending with some thoughts on the meaning of life… a lot to fit into one blog post but again I had the weekend to work on this. Read the rest of this entry »

Foster, A. N., Mishra, P. (in press). Games, claims, genres & learning. In R. E. Ferdig (Ed.), Handbook of research on effective electronic gaming in education. [PDF document] Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Koehler just pointed out a hilarious review of the TPACK handbook on Amazon.com. It is short, pithy and completely unconnected to the book. Read the rest of this entry »

Arthur C. Clarke, popularizer of science and science fiction writer died today. He was 90. Clarke was one of my favorite authors growing up Read the rest of this entry »

I have been reading Moo by Jane Smiley, off and on for a while now. It is a satire of academia set in a fictional Mid-western university called Moo U. Read the rest of this entry »