Punya Mishra's Web

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 »

One of the key aspects of the TPCK framework is the manner in which disciplinary knowledge interacts with pedagogy and technology. Till this date I did not have an adequate way of discussing how disciplinary knowledge and pedagogy interact, that is until I came across Janet Donald’s book Learning to Think: Disciplinary Perspectives.
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I recently finished reading three books: A case of Two Cities by Qiu Xialong, A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami, and Heavenly Date and Other Flirtations by Alexander McCall Smith. These are three very different books. The first two are novels and the third is a collection of short stories. Also, I have read other books by Xialong and Murakami (in fact I have blogged about one of them, the last book I had read by Murakami here) and this is the first book by McCall Smith that I have read (though I have been eying his series on The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency for a while). Despite these differences, both in their content, and in my experience with the authors, all three books, in one way or the another, have to do with the joys and perils of translation – the process of movement from one place to another, of ideas and emotions, across individuals, nations and cultures. Read the rest of this entry »

One Night at the Call Center is the second novel by Chetan Bhagat. I picked it up from the library, since I had read nice things about it on some website somewhere. What a tragic waste of time. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the important events at the New Orleans AACTE meeting was the release of the TPCK Handbook for Educators and the book signing. This was the first time I had ever participated in a book signing and it was great fun. Here are some photographs from the event…

Click on the images to see all the pictures …
From left to right: Joel Colbert, (the missing) Matt Koehler, Punya Mishra, Kamili Anderson, Nancy DePlatchett, Marcela van Olphen, and Mario Kelly.

I just discovered through the PhD-Design list an online book titled “Design: Creation of artifacts in society” by Karl T. Ulrich. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt and I will be at New Orleans next week for the AACTE Annual Conference. The last time I went to New Orleans must have been in 2000 or 2001… so I am looking forward to going there. There are three specific things we will be involved with.

• Meeting of the AACTE’s Innovation and Technology Committee, Thursday, February 7 from 4:15-6:15 p.m. Norwich Room on the 3rd floor of the Hilton New Orleans Riverside
• Book signing for Handbook of TPCK, Friday, February 8, 2:00 – 3:30. We are expecting the following authors/editors: Matt Koehler, Punya Mishra, Mario Kelly, Nancy DePlachett, Marcela van Olphen, Raven McCrory, Joel Colbert…Having never participated in a book signing before… I am kind of excited, even though this is an edited book, and I have just one chapter in it, co-authored with Matt. That said, it is a book on TPCK, which is cool.
• AACTE Major Forum, Saturday, Feb. 9, 2008 at 10:30 a.m. in the Versaille Ballroom
  I have blogged about this event before… more details, and copy presentation coming soon.

I finally received a copy of the Handbook of TPCK for educators (which I had blogged about previously here). It looks great! Matt and I have a key chapter (Introducing TPCK). I hadn’t read this in a while, and after I got the book, I skimmed it… and it reads well. In fact, I believe that this is one of the better pieces Matt and I have written, and we have written quite a bit of stuff together. Anyway, receiving the book reminded me of something I had intended to blog for a while, but had just never gotten around do.

The cover of the book is designed by Smita Sawai (with some input from me). Smita is a talented graphic designer who runs her own graphic design business Avani-Design. She also happens to be my wife Read the rest of this entry »

I picked up Summer Ball by Mike Lupica from Soham this evening, and ended up finishing it at one go (another excuse for not working on our AACTE presentation). Lupica writes sports novels for young adults and Summer Ball is a sequel to his previous best-seller Travel Team. I did not have high expectations from this book since I had been less than impressed by Travel Team, a book I had read (once again picking it up from Soham) a year or so ago. Worse still, I could not even go beyond the first few pages of his next book, Heat. Read the rest of this entry »

Eye Twisters: Ambigrams & other Visual Puzzles to Amaze and Entertain is a book edited by Burkard Polster, a professor of mathematics at Monash University. It features some of my work… Read the rest of this entry »

Faculty Development by Design: Integrating Technology in Higher Education. A volume in the series: Research Methods for Educational Technology. Series Editor(s): Walt Heinecke, University of Virginia

Edited by: Punya Mishra, Matthew J. Koehler, Yong Zhao
This book attempts to offer not just a bird’s-eye view of the communities of designers project, but also to help identify broad themes and issues that can inform discussions and policies of technology integration at other institutions. Read the rest of this entry »

Creativity and collaboration. Authorship and editorial prerogative, who has the final say, and who should receive the credit?

Here is an article in Drexel University’s Magazine “The Smart Set” about the role Raymond Carver’s editor played in “finalizing” his stories. As the article says:

Mr. Lish, working at Knopf, took the stories that Carver sent him and he hacked away at them, mercilessly. He liked the stories as they were, no doubt, but he saw something else in them as well, something harder and more pure. Read the rest of this entry »

I picked up Jacob Weisberg’s The Bush Tragedy from the library and finished reading it over the past day and a half. I have never been a fan of Bush, mainly because I was troubled, from the very beginning, by his lack of curiosity, and his unwillingness to learn. Weisberg has been a somewhat moderate fan of Bush, though he is now quite disappointed with what has happened in the past seven years. This book is his attempt to understand what went wrong and why. Read the rest of this entry »

I just finished reading Haruki Murakami’s novel South of the Border, West of the Sun. Having previously read a short story collection and a novel, I thought I knew what to expect, and yet Murakami surprised me. Read the rest of this entry »

I first read Ian McEwan many years ago (in the 80′s I think) when he wrote grim and macabre novels and short stories, full of strange dark humor. I found him somewhat interesting but not enough to seek out his books. And then, years later, this past fall I read Atonement, and it just blew me away. In quick succession I finished Saturday and now The Innocent. Read the rest of this entry »

Handbook of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) for Educators, Edited by The AACTE Committee on Innovation and Technology
A Co-Publication of Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group and the American Association for Colleges of Teacher Education Read the rest of this entry »

An essay by Mohsin Hamid (titled My reluctant fundamentalist) about the process of writing his novel “The reluctant fundamentalist.” What stands out in this piece is an excellent description of the extended and often painful act of creation Read the rest of this entry »

A Certain Ambiguity: A Mathematical Novel is a book written by two of my high school friends, Gaurav Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal. Read the rest of this entry »

I just finished reading Transplanted Man by Sanjay Nigam. A strange but entirely fascinating and satisfying novel with quirky and interesting characters. Nigam is quite willing to tackle difficult and “big” questions but does it with a light touch. Read the rest of this entry »