Punya Mishra’s Web whatnmnmn

Yesterday, as I was watching the second presidential debate, and following various bloggers who were live-blogging the event, I took a moment to check my email. I found that I had received a note from a former student. This individual had been in my summer cohort last year and also in my Learning Technology by Design class in the spring of 2008. The subject line said “Thank You!” and the note went on to expand on that thought, speaking in detail about her experience with the summer program, and the 817 course. This person wrote about how much they had gained from these experiences and how this had changed their personal approach towards teaching and, maybe more importantly, teaching with technology.

I am not including this email here for a couple of reasons. The first is modesty (not something that people have ever accused me of having, but even I have my limits). Second, this was a private note and I am not sure it was meant for public display. I realized that I needed to write something back in response, primarily because such affirmations of what we do as educators are so rare and I wanted to appreciate this person taking the time to write this note.

I am including below the note that I sent back. I have edited it slightly to remove any information that could be used to identify this individual.
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As un-official photographer for the Marathi Group, I took a bunch of pictures of this year’s Ganapati celebrations. These are now (finally) on Flickr.

Here are some links that came up during our discussion today regarding web-based software for education. Read the rest of this entry »

Just heard this of stealth assessment idea (from Michael Spector at NTLS) that struck a chord. More here, [word document].

I just received a gift in the mail. It was a box and in the box was Read the rest of this entry »

A NYTimes story about Spore, the new game / toy designed by Will Wright (Playing God, the Home Game) speaks about its connection to evolution. As the article says,

Mr. Wright and his publishers at Electronic Arts deserve all the credit they have received from some scientists merely for making a game about evolution (though it will be fascinating to see how the game fares among people who do not believe evolution is real).

This raises the interesting question as to whether this game can be used to actually teach evolutionary theory.

However, I am not sure just how much the game truly represents evolution as biologists think about it. Read the rest of this entry »

I leave for India tomorrow to participate in a Symposium on Education Technology in Schools: Converging for Innovation & Creativity being held in Bangalore from the 20th to the 22nd of August. The meeting is organized by the Quest Alliance, USAID and International Youth Foundation and “is designed to bring together education and education technology practitioners, scholars and experts, academicians and students for an exchange of ideas aimed towards creative approaches and solutions for technology use in teaching and learning.”

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I had recently posted a note (It’s only a game…) building on some thoughts in an article by William Saletan. In this article Saletan describes how weapons are increasingly becoming like games. His recent post takes that whole thing one level further.
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… but what if real people die?

Excellent article by William Saletan on Slate about a new breed of war-toys that blur the line between video games and real war. As the article says, “if looks and feels like a video game. But it kills real people.” As it turns out, the company that designed these new tools, Raytheon actually hired game developers to design how these weapons would work. The result is “a user-friendly array of throttles, switches, and thumb controls.”
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A few months ago I wrote about Professor R. K. Joshi (here and here). He was, as I said in the piece, maybe the single greatest influence on my role as a teacher. I had mentioned that R.K. loved absurdity and play. I was reminded of this when I read about this group called Improv Everywhere. Check out their website and the kinds of crazy things they get into. Very cool.

R.K. often talked about similar things that he was involved in, mostly around poetry and typography. I know RK would have been pleased…

Learning through play has been an important part of my philosophy of teaching (and learning). In fact I have argued that play is far more important than games (though games have been receiving a great deal of educational interest lately). [You can read a previous posting about the relationship between play and games here.

Play in my mind (and in my teaching) if often connected with humor. As it turns out, recent research indicates that this connection has an evolutionary history. As this article argues, humor is a part of our “mammalian inheritance, and [is] closely related to rough-and-tumble social play.” Read the rest of this entry »

A few years ago Sachin Kalbag, then at Digit, contacted me to write an article for a special for the magazine’s fourth anniversary issue. The topic at hand was Digital Convergence, what it is, and what does it mean for our future? 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 »

NYTimes article titled, Storming the Campuses on the next big thing on college campuses: GoCrossCampus! This new kind of a game (and game genre) has been described as Multiplayer Locally Social Gaming and the way it is spreading, it may soon need to add “Massively” to the front of that already clunky phrase, hence MMLSG!

My 8 year old daughter, Shreya, came to me the other day and said that she had designed a learning game. I asked her to draw it out for me and here is what she had created.

Some thoughts on play and games inspired by a recent article in the NYTimes Magazine titled “Taking Play Seriously“. Based on the article I argue that play is essential for learning… I also throw in some thoughts about the distinction between play and games, and why I prefer one over the other. Read the rest of this entry »

Check this out. Very strange and a lot of fun.

A journal article on games and gender, that has been years in the making is finally going to see the light of day! The complete reference and abstract can be found below. Drop me an email if you would like a copy.

Heeter, C., Egidio, R., Mishra, P., Winn, B., & Winn, J. (accepted). Alien Games: Do girls prefer games designed by girls? Games & Culture Journal. Read the rest of this entry »