Punya Mishra's Web

As I go around presenting my work around 21st century learning I get requests for some of the visuals I show. In particular, I have been receiving requests for

• Synthesis of 21st Century Knowledge
• 7 trans-disciplinary skills for creativity in the 21st century

If you choose to use these diagrams in your work please credit it as follows: © Punya Mishra | punyamishra.com 2013

So for future convenience, here they are…

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I just read this wonderful essay by UCLA professor Peter Nonacs titled: Why I Let My Students Cheat On Their Game Theory Exam. In this essay he describes an experiment he recently conducted in his game theory class. This is what he told his students a week before the final exam for the class:

… I told my class that the Game Theory exam would be insanely hard—far harder than any that had established my rep as a hard prof. But as recompense, for this one time only, students could cheat. They could bring and use anything or anyone they liked, including animal behavior experts. (Richard Dawkins in town? Bring him!) They could surf the Web. They could talk to each other or call friends who’d taken the course before. They could offer me bribes. (I wouldn’t take them, but neither would I report it to the dean.) Only violations of state or federal criminal law such as kidnapping my dog, blackmail, or threats of violence were out of bounds.

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Chris Fahnoe, just sent me a link to a piece on KQED on measuring creativity. Nothing particularly new here but reading it sent me down a rabbit-hole of some quotes and ideas I had been wanting to blog about for a while. So here goes. All this started when I read a quote in the article by Dr. James Catterall, a psychologist and director of the Centers for Research on Creativity in Los Angeles. He describes an interesting finding that emerged from as they were testing their new survey on measuring creativity:

Elementary school kids scored better on it than high school kids did. “I think the expression that many people use is that the schools have a tendency to suck the creativity out of kids over time,” he says.

As Ken Robinson said, in his TED talk:

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Helen Hazen, is the author of 1983 book, Endless Rapture: Rape, Romance, and the Female Imagination. In a recent article in The American Scholar titled “Endless Rewriting” she recounts the way the book came to be and in particular the role that her editor (Jacques Barzun) played in getting the book started and more importantly finished.

I found the essay absolutely fascinating—a great encapsulation of what the kind of intellectual growth and development that happens (or at least ought to happen) in graduate school and the crucial role played by the advisor in guiding this process. And finally, this article, in pointing out an ideal advisor, just brought home to me how far I still have to go. The article is worth reading in full but here are some thoughts, on mentorship, graduate school, the process of writing and what it all means.   Read the rest of this entry »

Tara Brabazon, professor of media studies at the University of Brighton, has an essay in the Times Higher Education, titled How not to write a PhD thesis, providing her top ten tips for doctoral failure. Though the essay is geared towards dissertations in media studies (as indicated by the mention deconstruction, poststructuralism, Derrida, Baudrillard and more…) there are broader lessons that makes sense for doctoral candidates in education (and I am sure other social sciences) as well. Go ahead and read the article in full. Below I include some quotes from the article that stayed with me, but I repeat, the entire article is worth reading…

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Chris Fahnoe’s award winning paper was presented at SITE a couple of days ago. Here is the final reference as well as the slides and paper.

Fahnoe, C., & Mishra, P. (2013). Do 21st Century Learning Environments Support Self-Directed Learning? Middle School Students’ Response to an Intentionally Designed Learning Environment. Paper to be presented at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Society of Information Technology in Teacher Education, New Orleans.

Paper: FahnoeMishra-SITE2013-paper (PDF)

Slides: FahnoeMishra-SITE2013-slides (PDF)

Slides embedded via Issu:  Read the rest of this entry »

We finished our second symposium yesterday. Titled the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Hybrid and Online Doctoral Programs the symposium included presentations by faculty members from Michigan State University and University of North Texas. Ann Thompson was our discussant. From the abstract:

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I just presented a paper based on a dissertation completed by Gokce Kurt currently at Marmara University, Dept. of English Language Teaching, Istanbul, Turkey. Gokce got in touch with me a few years ago as she was preparing for her dissertation. We “met” through email and skype as she designed her research study. Fast forward a few years, and I was proud to be invited to serve on her dissertation committee. Below is a photo of her skype based dissertation meeting – a first for me!

Gokce could not make it to New Orleans and so it was my privilege to present her dissertation research here at SITE. An abstract, copy of her slides, and her paper are archived below.  Read the rest of this entry »

We just completed our symposium at SITE titled: Breaking Disciplinary Boundaries in 21st Century Learning: Creative Teaching with Digital Technologies. The symposium consisted of 7 presentations followed a summary by Teresa Foulger (of Arizona State University). In brief, we argued the following:

The past few decades have seen a tremendous burst of creativity and innovation fueled by digital technologies.  From Google to YouTube, from cloud computing to mobile devices, new technologies have had an immense impact on how we live, work, play, and thereby how we teach and learn (Florida, 2002).  Given the relationship between creativity and technology, it is not surprising that educators have argued that teaching and learning in the 21^st century must emphasize both the issues of technology and creativity (Mishra & The Deep-Play Research Group, 2012).  This symposium suggests that a new framework for creativity – trans-disciplinary thinking – provides an invaluable set of meta-level cognitive skills for flexible use in creatively teaching with technology (Mishra, Koehler & Henriksen).  Presentations will describe the framework, present a broader context for 21^st century skills such as technology and creative thinking, and discuss a range of examples of ways this framework has been used by skillful, creative K-12 teachers.  The symposium will conclude by describing new directions for research relating to trans-disciplinary thinking among teachers learning to use the framework.

The complete set of slides that went with the presentations can be found below, as well as brief descriptions of each of the presentations.   Read the rest of this entry »

SITE2013 (the annual conference of the Society of Information Technology in Teacher Education) is being held in New Orleans starting next week. The Educational Psychology and Educational Technology program at MSU has a significant presence at the conference. This includes presentations and symposia organized by faculty, graduate students and graduates of our program. Thanks to Josh Rosenberg, we now have a list of all the various events EPET people are involved in. Here it is, arranged chronologically:

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Chris Fahnoe is a doctoral student in our hybrid PhD program. As a part of his practicum research he conducted a study investigating whether students embedded in technology-rich, self-directed, open-ended learning environments develop self-regulation skills? We submitted his paper to the 2013 SITE conference at New Orleans, and will be presenting it there next week. Here is the reference (slides and paper coming soon).

Fahnoe, C., & Mishra, P. (2013). Do 21st Century Learning Environments Support Self-Directed Learning? Middle School Students’ Response to an Intentionally Designed Learning Environment. Paper to be presented at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Society of Information Technology in Teacher Education, New Orleans.

We recently found out that this paper will be receiving two different awards at the SITE conference. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by Simon Shuster, journalist at the State News. A couple of quotes made it into the article. Here, for the record, is the link: Wired up, ready to go.

Interestingly enough, this was the second story that Simon has written about me. Back in January 2012 he had written a story for his high school newspaper, which had mentioned my work as well. I had blogged about it here.

The latest in our series Rethinking Technology and Creativity in the 21st Century is now available. The article was co-authored with Aman Yadav of Purdue University (and the Deep-Play Research Group) and focuses on the art and science of computational thinking. We offer a slightly broader frame for thinking about computational thinking, a frame that includes artistic creativity.

Here is a link to the full article

Mishra, P., Yadav, A., & the Deep-Play Research Group (2013). Of Art and Algorithms. Tech Trends, (57) 3. p. 10-14.

This article continues the series of papers that the group has been writing. Here is a complete list Read the rest of this entry »

The current issue of TechTrends (Volume 57, Issue 3, March 2013) is a special spotlight issue, and the spotlight this time around is on the Educational Psychology and Educational Technology Programs at Michigan State University! This special spotlight issue was edited by myself with help from Laura Terry and Danah Henriksen. A special thanks to Abbie Brown (former editor of the journal for starting the process) and Dan Surry and Chuck Hodges for all their help and hand-holding to bring it to fruition. Thanks also to all the authors for being thoughtful and prompt and dealing with our idiosyncratic editorial demands.

Most importantly thanks to all our faculty, staff and students without whose hard work and creativity we would have no programs, assignments, or achievements to write about.

Here are the articles: Read the rest of this entry »

CEP917 (Knowledge Media Design) a course I co-taught with Danah Henriksen, in the fall semester 2012, received the First Place (in the Blended Course category) in the 2013 MSU-AT&T Instructional Technology Awards Competition. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention John Bell and William Cain as being part of the design team that made 917 possible. You can read our proposal (here) AND see the video that we made as a part of the proposal below.  

TPACK Newsletter, Issue #15: March 2013

Special Spring 2013 Conference Issue

Below please find a listing of TPACK-related papers/sessions that will be presented at the SITE conference in March in New Orleans, Louisiana; at the AERA annual meeting in April in San Francisco, California; and at the ISTE conference in June in San Antonio, Texas. (That’s 61 TPACK-related conference sessions in just 3 months!) Read the rest of this entry »

Jamie Smith at Ohio University has created a Prezi presentation on TPACK in Science Education. I think it is a pretty good introduction to the topic. Enjoy

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Danah Henriksen and I taught CEP917 (Knowledge Media Design) last semester. This was a somewhat unique class, with half the students being present here on campus and the other half online. We met synchronously once every two weeks and the rest of the class happened through the course website. We recently created a video introducing our experience in designing and teaching this class.

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Our latest article on the series Technology, Creativity & 21st Century Learning  is now available (link and the complete reference given below).

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My friend Carl Young of NCState recently released an edited volume (co-editor, Sara Kajder a the University of Pittsburgh) titled Research on Technology in English Education. It is a volume in the series: Research Methods for Educational Technology, edited by Walt Heinecke, University of Virginia.

Just as an aside, I edited a book in this series as well (with Matt Koehler & Yong Zhao) many years ago. You can find out more about our book Faculty development by design: Integrating technology in higher education by going here. 

Coming back to Carl and Kajder’s book… the description and table of contents is given below: Read the rest of this entry »

My friend Teresa Foulger at Arizona State University  informed me about the fact that the journal LEARNing Landscapes has a special issue on creativity.  I had not heard of the journal before and I was pleasantly surprised by the articles in this special issue. LEARNing Landscapes is:

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From Chris Sloan, teacher at Judge Memorial Catholic High School and a student in our hybrid PhD program, comes a link to a TED talk. The description is as follows:

Creative genius Drew Davies and forward-thinking educator Jaime McGrath propose a new approach to classroom teaching: Turn curricula into design challenges, classrooms into workshops and teach students to think like designers.

This is a paper that had come out a while ago, and I just didn’t get a chance to post it (actually I just forgot). Anyway, here it is:

Mishra, P., Koehler, M. J., Zellner, A., & Kereluik, K. (2012). Thematic considerations in integrating TPACK in a graduate program. In D. Polly, C. Mims, & K. Persichitte (Eds.),Developing Technology-Rich Teacher Education Programs: Key Issues (pp. 1-12). Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.

ABSTRACT

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In a couple of previous blog post (Student engagement in school, the tale of 2 graphs and Understanding student engagement) I wrote about  the findings of a recent Gallup Poll on student engagement. The first post was concerned with how the data were represented and the second focused on the actual items to measure student engagement.

@ewilliams65 (Eric Williams, a friend and a Superintendent in Virginia and one of the more innovative and forward-looking administrators I know) wrote a blog post (Gallup’s five questions regarding student engagement) in which he takes me to task (mildly, I must add) for questioning whether “the five items that Gallup used were the best measure of student engagement.” Now I respect Eric a great deal and when he questions me, I look inward, since I know he comes at his conclusions extremely thoughtfully — and also because his blog is titled Promoting Student Engagement, which makes him an expert on the topic, more than what I can say about myself .

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I had posted recently about a Gallup poll on student engagement. Essentially the poll showed that student engagement dropped precipitously (though as I wrote, not as starkly as their graph indicated) as students moved from elementary to high school. My friend, Gaurav responded with a comment, as follows:

Engaged for how much percentage of the school day? Most of the day may be boring, but some parts may be engaging for many students. I haven’t seen the original poll that you highlight, but the data that you picked doesn’t say anything, and as you said, the graph is misleading there too.

This got me to thinking as to how engagement was measured in the first place. A bit of digging around led me to a couple of pieces by Dr. Shane Lopez. Read the rest of this entry »

Gallup recently released a poll on student engagement – and the main finding is that “the longer students stay in school, the less engaged they become.” As the post says:

The Gallup Student Poll surveyed nearly 500,000 students in grades five through 12 from more than 1,700 public schools in 37 states in 2012. We found that nearly eight in 10 elementary students who participated in the poll are engaged with school. By middle school that falls to about six in 10 students. And by high school, only four in 10 students qualify as engaged.

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Our latest article on the series Technology and Creativity is now available (link and the complete reference given below). Co-authored with Chris Fahnoe, Dr. Danah Henriksen, and the Deep-Play Research group, this paper builds on Chris’ practicum research study and investigates whether students embedded in technology-rich, self-directed, open-ended learning environments develop self-regulation skills? This is an important question because:

Creativity and in-disciplined learning requires balancing the forces of order and chaos. Learning environments need to provide students a flexible structure within which students can experiment, collaborate, and problem solve. These are contexts that allow students to learn from both success and failure. Such open-ended environments, however, can be challenging to learners as well. They can appear chaotic and offer little guidance to students on how to navigate them.

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Over the past year or so I have been part of an exciting project conducted as part of Microsoft’s Partner’s in Learning project - specifically the team focusing on Higher Education. This is a project initiated by Microsoft “aimed at helping educators and students reach their full potential.” A key piece of this project is the Teacher Education Initiative. As the website says:

The Microsoft Teacher Education Initiative (TEI) is a workshop designed by School of Education faculty for pre-service teachers and their faculty.

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