Punya Mishra’s Web

I am extremely proud of what we do as a part of our Master’s in Ed Tech (MAET) program. It is a unique program and over the years we have worked hard to make it a multi-faceted and unique experience for your students. Over the next few weeks I (with some help from doctoral student Laura Terry) will be posting examples of the excellent work our students do in this program. (See here for the first post about representing educational tensions with photography.)

The design of our program is very carefully thought through—driven both by powerful theoretical ideas grounded in the pragmatics of teaching and learning. Just this week I found out that a paper we had written about the kinds of activities we do in the MAET program just got published. If you are interested in teacher education and teacher professional development or specifically in the MAET program please check out:

Koehler, M.J., Mishra, P., Bouck, E. C., DeSchryver, M., Kereluik, K., Shin, T.S., Wolf, L.G. (2011). Deep-Play: Developing TPACK for 21st Century Teachers. International Journal of Learning Technology, Vol. 6, No. 2. 146-163. 

Abstract: A key complication facing teachers who seek to integrate technology in their teaching is the fact that most technologies are not designed for educational purposes. Making a tool an educational technology requires creative input from the teacher to re-design, or maybe even subvert the original intentions of the designer. The learning technology by design (LT/D) framework has been proposed as being an effective instructional technique to develop deeper understanding of technological pedagogical content knowledge. In this paper we expand our description of the LT/D technique to develop what we call a deep-play model for teacher professional development. The deep-play model integrates: (a) pedagogy for key 21st century learning skills; (b) content that cuts across disciplines with trans-disciplinary cognitive tools; (c) technology by the creative repurposing of tools for pedagogical purposes.

Please let me know if you would like a copy of the paper.

Education is always about leadership and leadership has always been about tensions—navigating through them and seeking to find the right balance between them.  Leaders often feel a tug from individuals with conflicting interests or needs, with ideas that often tug in different directions.  Often these tensions are conceptual and abstract.  Have you ever wondered how could you represent these tensions in a visual way? What would that look like?  We, in the MAET program, set out to find a way to illustrate these conflicting viewpoints.

During the summer MAET courses, students in East Lansing, Michigan and Rouen, France completed a leadership tensions photography activity. Using the cognitive tools of patterning (recognizing, identifying and creating patterns) and embodied thinking (kinesthetic thinking or empathizing), students considered the tensions between seemingly contradictory ideas in education.  Following a small group discussion, the class used patterning to identify common themes and issues, creating a list of tensions that exist in educational leadership.  Each individual then chose one of those tensions and took photographs that visually depicted the tension, using a digital camera and editing software (often freely available software like Pixlr) to combine two or more images into one.  Through the utilization of embodied thinking, students adopted a concept of educational tensions and rendered a physical/kinesthetic illustration of it, using movement, balance, and the body.

Students illustrated a multitude of tensions that leaders in today’s educational world face, including online versus traditional learning, tradition versus innovation, competition versus collaboration, and support versus resistance.  Below are a few examples of student work.

This was an incredibly engaging project, that integrated the key ideas (leadership tensions) that were to be covered, with technology (digital cameras and image editing tools) and the key cognitive tools (of patterning and embodied thinking) in an open-ended and fun way. This is what we call TPACK in action!

If you are interested in exploring more examples of this project, please visit the following links.

• Rouen Leadership Tensions Examples
• East Lansing Leadership Tensions Examples

The following note just went out to all the students signed up for CEP818, Creativity in Teaching and Learning (Fall semester 2011). 

We hope you have had a great summer are ready to get back to school! We (Punya Mishra & Kristen Kereluik) will be your instructors for CEP818.  You can find out more about us by visiting our websites. This note is to welcome you to the class and offer some specifics about what you will need to do before class starts. Please read this note carefully since it contains important information on things that need to be done before the class starts.

As you may know, CEP818 is a fully online class; there are no plans to meet face-to-face, unless that includes our digitized photos beamed over the Web. We will begin the class on Wednesday, August 31. Please note that the class will NOT be conducted through ANGEL. We will send you an email (to your MSU address) with the more details closer to the start of the semester. For now, we provide a little bit about the class followed by some information about what you need to do to prepare for it.

Creativity is of increasing importance to educators, both for their professional success and that of their students, particularly given the complex, rapidly changing world we live in. The emergence of the knowledge economy (and the knowledge worker) means that tasks are rarely “given” or structured. We are now expected to operate in a complex and chaotic ecology where our very survival and personal identity is tied up in improvising knowledgeable answers to largely unanticipated problems. It has been argued that the solution to these concerns is an increased emphasis on creativity.

So, how is it that you can start to think more creatively for yourselves, apply those methods to your teaching, and pass on some to your students? Well, it is really, really easy (well maybe not really, really easy, but it is often not as hard as we make it out to be). It can also be a lot of fun.

A critical part of becoming creative is being able to play—particularly with ideas or concepts – and feel comfortable in doing so. The activities in this course will seek to develop such an approach through, what we call, “thinking tools.” In an interactive series of modules we will explore these tools and their relationship to creativity. Each of the issues/topics will also be illustrated with multiple examples from the world of education, psychology, and business, interspersed with games and puzzles connected to the ideas being discussed.

Here are some things we would like you to do to prepare for 818:

• Buy (or otherwise obtain) the book: Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People by Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein. This will be our core text. Note: Amazon.com lists the book for as low as $5.50, though you may have your own favorite bookstore. You are not required to have to have read the textbook before class – but feel free to dip into it…
• Be prepared technologically:
• Have a computer with a high-speed Internet connection, a standard productivity suite (word-processing, presentation tools, etc.), an up to date browser (we recommend Firefox or Chrome) with standard plug-ins (PDF reader, Flash viewer, etc.). Note: If you can access the reading and the movies below you should be good to go.
• You should also have access to a digital camera: We plan to do some photography through the semester, so – so it will be good for you to have one just for yourself (at least for the duration of the course). It doesn’t have to be a very fancy one, though if you have one, that’s great.
• Read a book chapter and watch a video
• Download and read the attached chapter by Csíkszentmihályi on Enhancing Personal Creativity from his book, Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. http://bit.ly/bQ7Lx
• Watch this video by Dr. Ken Robinson where he argues for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity. http://bit.ly/2tkgtH

Finally, the most important thing you can do to prepare for 818 is to come to the course website on the first day of class with an open mind and a willingness to play.

We look forward to working together this fall. Drop us an email (punya@msu.edu or kereluik@msu.edu) if you have any questions or concerns. Please remember to put CEP818 in the subject line.

Take care
Punya Mishra and Kristen Kereluik

I had a wonderful day at the Grant Woods Area Education Agency at Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I was invited there by Andy Crozier and his team as a part of their 21st Century Learning Institute. I spent the day with 50+ teachers, library media specialists, and administrators talking about TPACK, creativity, technology integration and other fun stuff. This was a great group of people and I had a great time (and I hoped that they did too).

A wordle of some of the ideas that we touched upon can be found below (thanks Nick Sauers)

You can find a PDF document of my slides as well as a PDF of the demotivational posters created by the participants. (Even if you don’t see my slides, you MUST see the posters… they are funny and worth a moment of your time).

A couple of participant took notes during the day and have kindly made them available:

• Nick Sauer’s Notes | Blog posting
• Matt Townsley’s Notes (Incidentally Matt and I have known each other for a while now but had never met. It was great to finally meet up with one of my online buddies. Matt blogs at MetaMusing)

The participants also created (as a part of the workshop) some poems. I am including them below:

Creativity Haiku
by Karry, Michelle, Kathleen, Beth, Todd, Kathy
technology is
creative innovation
tpack makes us think

Limerick
by Deanne, Ruth, Jason
Administrators, librarians and teachers
Came to learn about “teachnology” features
TPACK is the focus
Dr. Punya is the “mostest”
They came out of there much wiser creatures

Untitled
by Joe, Kay, and Jessica
While spoon feeding our students in class
We focus on the Total PACKage
As we use, integrate, and innovate
To help them Know-Act-Value
We find-Everything is NEW

Deja Who?
by Amy, Christopher, & Mike
There once was a man from MSU.
He Déjà Vu’ed and Veja du’ed.
TPACK was his shared view
of all that was NEW!

Poem
by Melva, Cathy, Jan, Kim, Dianna
Acronyms, acronyms, here’s what we found
TPACK is where teaching hits the ground.
Technology, Pedagogy, Content and Knowledge
Will take teaching beyond the cutting edge.

NEW stands for Novel, Effective and Whole
And if something is meant to roll, it should roll.
We’re learning how in our classrooms to apply
All of this information which is in great supply.

Team TPACK
by Tony, Mary, Kelly, Jodi
There once was a teacher from Marimac
Who wanted to teach with his Mac
His friend said now Jo
Just take it slow.
Remember to think about TPACK

Poem
by Mary, Brad and Jan
Teaching 3 knowledge bases
Providing framework for technology integration
And
Creativity
Keeping learning déjà vu and veja du

Creativity
by Brian, Lisa, Seth, Julie, Stacy
There was a smart man from MSU,
who defined creativity as N-E-W.
He effectively did present
technology, pedagogy and content
and it all started with veja du.

Thanks to Andy and his team for this wonderful opportunity.

I was recently in San Diego for the annual conference of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education. I had served as a chair of the Innovation & Technology Committee for a while, and the committee invited me to participate in two different sessions. The current chairs, Glen Bull and Pamela Redmond (with Rachel Popham of the AACTE) did a super job of organizing the two sessions.

The first was a concurrent session on Integrating Technology into Teaching & Learning: TPACK’s Next Chapter. This session focused on the integration of technology, pedagogy and content knowledge, framed by review of the TPACK Handbook and the upcoming Practitioner’s Guide to TPACK. My task was quite simple really, to provide an introduction to TPACK and context for the handbook. I was preceded by Joel Colbert (former chair of the committee under whose leadership the Handbook of TPACK was published) and followed by Denise Schmidt (current member of the committee) who talked about the research they have been doing on TPACK at Iowa State University. The last speakers were Glen Bull and Pamela Redmond who spoke about the upcoming Practitioner’s Guide to TPACK. It was a pretty full room and I think all the presentations went really well.

Here are the slides of all the presentations, in pdf format.

The next day was a major forum on Preparing Millennial Educator Candidates. The session was moderated by Pam Redmond and included Colleen Kennedy who spoke about 21st Century Education: Impact and Applications of Social Networking, Richard Sterling who talked about Teaching writing in the 21st Century, Denise Schimdt speaking about Are “Our” Teachers Ready for the Millennials? and finally your’s truly who spoke about What does the future hold? I took this opportunity to share some of the work I have been doing with Kristen Kereluik on 21st Century Learning and our transdisciplinary course.

The slides for all the sessions can be found here, in pdf format.

Leigh Wolf, is many things: techie, teacher, foodie, and friend. She is also a doctoral student in our program and coordinator of our Master’s in Educational Technology Program. Recently Leigh was nominated and short-listed for the Learning without Frontiers awards in the Further & Higher Education category. I really don’t know anybody more deserving of this honor and I know that many of you would agree with this assessment.

So I would request you to take a moment to go ahead and vote for her. It’s really easy. You can send an SMS or use Skype-SMS and send “WOLF” (without the quotes) to 07950 080 667 (if you are calling from within UK) or +44 7950 080 667 if from outside UK.

That’s it. Its that easy.

To see all the finalists, check out the Learning Without Frontiers 2011 Award Finalists and here is a link to Leigh’s info on their website.

So what are you waiting for? Vote for Leigh – send WOLF to 07950 080 667 (+44 7950 080 667 NON-UK)

Voting ends midnight UK time on January 4th, so hurry.

Thanks in anticipation

Kristen Kereluik, Matt Koehler and I just published an article in The California Reader: A publication of the California Reading Association. The complete citation and abstract is as follows:

Kereluik, K., Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2010, Winter). On learning to subvert signs: Literacy, Technology and the TPACK framework. The California Reader, 44, 2, (12-18). [PDF download].

This paper discusses new literacy practices that can be enabled through the creative repurposing of digital technologies. We frame the discussion within the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. TPACK is a form of knowledge that teachers need to have in order to successfully integrate technology in their teaching.  TPACK argues for the idea of teachers as designers of curriculum, who repurpose existing technical tools for pedagogical purposes. Finally we offer a set of implications of this approach for teacher preparation programs.

We start the paper with two examples that were first reported on this blog. The first is from Michael Hughes, a graduate of our MAET program, who had something he does with his 6th grade students and the second has to do with Sean Nash (of Nashworld fame) and an activity he gave students in his advanced biology class – reported here.

As I have been blogging over the years I am finding more and more examples of this kind of bi-directional influence, academic texts end up on my blog (edited or unedited) and my blogging informs the my academic writing! I had expected the former to happen, in fact the broader dissemination of my academic writing was part of the reason I started this blog in the first place. What I had not expected was to see my blogging contributing to my academic writing.

I was recently invited to present a keynote address at the 21st Century Instructional Technology Conference (titled Elements of Technology) at the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada. Clark County is the 5th largest school district in the country with over 300,000 students and it was a great privilege to be invited to present there. I was invited there by the Instructional Technology Department (led by Loretta Asay) and my contact person was Project Facilitator, Sherwood Jones. They are a great group of people and I truly had a wonderful time there.

Apart from the Keynote I also conducted a workshop on Creativity and Teaching with Technology. I had anticipated having around 25 people for the workshop but the room was overflowing (at least 15 more than I had anticipated). That did throw a few kinks into my routine but nothing that was unsurmountable. I am sharing below some of the things that people created during this two hour workshop.

I explained my idea of a creative idea or product as being Novel, Effective and Whole (the so called New NEW)! This led Terra Graves, Thomasina Rose and Kristina Ernest to create this acrostic poem.

New
Organic
Visual
Engaging
Longevity

Educational
Fun
Freedom
Everyone
Creativity
Teachers
Innovative
Variety
Enthusiasm

Winning
Holistic
Outside the Box
Learning
Exciting

Here are a few more from Lisa Widmer, Katie Jones, Brent Mesenburg and Robert Jackson

The first two are limericks that summarize some of the things we had talked about in the first half of the workshop.

Creativity is our goal
Make it Novel Effective and Whole
When in doubt
Turn it about
And satisfy your soul

A second, funnier, version is as follows:

Creativity is our goal
Make it Novel Effective and Whole
When in doubt
Don’t Freak out
It’s quite alright if you stole

The same team wrote another poem, synthesizing some of the ideas we played with in the second half of the workshop.

Being creative is like heaven
Mimic the great Magellan
And fear not missteps
Just use the five steps
And crank that knob to eleven

The “crank the knob to eleven” of course being a response to the (in)famous scene from This is Final Tap.

A couple of other pieces that emerged from this team (can you tell this was a prolific group) was the quote:

“Tweak it to Teach it”

Somewhat along the same lines was Patrick Whitehead who suggested the following two:

Thinking is tweaking your mind

Think better… TWEAK your mind!

Apart from this display of verbal dexterity, the participants also completed a “letter search” task where they looked for letter that spell out the word “Relax, Repose, Reteach.” I had done a similar activity with students in our MAET program a year ago in Plymouth. Essentially what I did was create a somewhat awkward problem scenario the solution to which were the words Relax, Repose, Reteach. So these were the letters students searched for… and this is what they came up with.

Now for the twist! As it turns out one of the themes of the keynote (and the workshop) were the three words “Explore, Create, Share.” Students watched each of the three videos that we had created (see them here) as well as the mashup that had inspired us to begin with (see the original and the mashup here).

What the students didn’t know was that the three words (Relax, Repose, Reteach) could be rearranged to read… (surprise, surprise) the words Create, Explore, Share!! Here is what that looks like…

I must give a shout-out to High School Freshman Bryan Jones who I “volunteered” to help me out. He had a tough job, collecting all the pictures since there were multiple cameras (from regular digital cameras to iPhones), missing cables, a mac that was running Windows (which mean iPhoto wouldn’t cooperate)… and he had to pull everything together in around 25 minutes while the workshop was still going on… And he managed it without fuss and stress. Thanks!

Finally, we all watched the new Steven Johnson video “Where good ideas come from” and created demotivational posters based on what they heard and saw. Below is the video (just in case you haven’t seen it already) and below that the posters the students created.

Choose Wisely Patrick Whitehead Tim Hart	Innovation Karen Decker Terry Ector	Don’t Worry Michael C. Gregory
This is a hunch Thomasina Rose Kristina Ernest Terra Graves	Ideas Brandi Mizner Beth Pearson Holly Marich Laurie Koelliker Gary Eisnor	Creativity? Roger Mayo Matt Keener

As you can imagine this was a hectic workshop for all of us. We covered a lot of ground and the participants also created some interesting artifacts that can have a life beyond the immediate workshop. What fun!

I’m excited to announce that the MAET program is hiring a new team member. The official posting is below (or you can go here). The posting closes on September 30 – email all of the application materials to edutech@msu.edu

CNS ED PSYSPC ED – SPECIALIST-OUTRCH

Posting Date: Sept. 17, 2010
Posting Number: CED-23

Fixed-Term, 12-month basis, 100% time.

DUTIES: The MSU College of Education offers the Educational Technology Certificate, a 3-course 9-credit program, designed for educators who seek to understand the essential qualities of knowledge required of technology integration in to teaching. The emphasis is on enabling teachers to change their practice of teaching in positive ways. To do so, teachers learn new instructional and pedagogical strategies and learn ways that technology can enhance and support the learning process. The Educational Technology Certificate program is an accelerated graduate program that focuses on teaching teachers how to use and teach with today’s technologies. To meet the needs of teachers, the program is offered in a variety of formats; online, hybrid and overseas. Basic Function: Coordination and instruction in Educational Technology Certificate Program and participate in outreach projects. Approximately 50% of work time spent outside of the office. Responsible for coordinating, community building, strategizing and advocating for the Educational Technology Certificate program. Major Responsibilities: School recruitment (meet with school administrators to host the program locally in their district); teacher recruitment; provide inservice programming to K-12 teachers; teach in Educational Technology Certificate program; create and maintain contact database; provide oversight of instruction and feedback to instructors; send out quarterly newsletter; conduct focus groups.

QUALIFICATIONS: Masters in Educ, Ed Tech, Digital Media, New Media, Dig Writ or reltd. Qualifications other than degree: Experience teaching in a K-12 environment; High level of interpersonal, verbal, visual and written communication skills; Experience with a wide range of computer software, hardware and social media tools; Must be familiar with the following technologies: WordPress and other open source content management systems; ANGEL, Moodle, Blackboard and other learning management systems; Google Apps and other cloud based software; Online communication tools (Skype, Adobe Connect, etc.); Web 2.0 applications; Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, etc.); Mobile Applications (iPhone, Android, iPad, etc.); Willingness to travel; Working knowledge of a University environment, including policies and procedures.

APPLICATIONS: Due October 1, 2010. MSU is an affirmative-action, equal-opportunity employer. MSU is committed to achieving excellence through cultural diversity. The university actively encourages applications and/or nominations of women, persons of color, veterans and persons with disabilities. Interested candidates should send a letter of application, resume, and three letters of reference to edutech@msu.edu.

A véjà du experience is about looking at a familiar situation but with fresh eyes, as if you’ve never seen it before. It forms the basis of an assignment I give in my CEP818, Creativity in Teaching & Learning course. The assignment is described in greater detail here, but the core idea is to take multiple photographs of some everyday object in such a way that the viewer cannot easily determine what the object is! More here.

Today, I spent some time with my kids re-doing the assignment. My son suggested taking pictures of his X-Box 360 but we finally went with an object selected by my daughter. Here are the pictures. What do you think it is?

There have been various descriptions of the TPACK game… some of which I have written about earlier.

• The first instance is something Judi Harris, Matt and I used at the 2007 NTLS meeting at Washington DC. You can find out more about it here.
• Second, is a submission by Karen Richardson from Virginia, written up in the February 09 TPACK newsletter.
• And earlier this year, I had blogged about a game developed by the Littleton School District in Colorado.

Finally, Matt Koehler has mocked up a version of the game online. He created it for the EPET Hybrid PhD program he was teaching this summer. Though he isn’t sure the game is really ready for “prime-time” he does have it available on his website. Check it out: The TPACK Game, Matt Koehler version. The instructions are simple:

In the TPACK Game, you consider how Technology (T), Pedagogy (P), and Content (C) work together by randomly choosing two of the three (C, P, and T), and thinking deeply to find the third that makes them all work together in a pedagogically sound way to teach the content.

Enjoy.

A few weeks ago I posted a note about an assignment I gave my students in the on-campus version of the MAET program. They had completed an unit on motivation and had watched the RSA / Daniel Pink video and their task was was to create demotivational posters, (along the lines of those on despair.com) using ideas either from their readings/discussions or from the Pink video.

The posters were a huge success. In fact Daniel Pink tweeted them (Thanks Daniel) and lots of his followers ended up on my website to see the work done by the students, which is all very cool.

Well, I am now in Rouen, France, meeting with the students in the off-campus MAET program. I got a chance to work with each of the groups (representing year 1, 2 & 3) and had them create similar posters as well. So now we have a total of 17(!) posters. It is interesting to see just how different they are, even the ones that tackle the same concept do it differently.

I have included all of the posters below  — the one’s from East Lansing as well as the one’s created here at Rouen. Click on the words to see the posters (the names of the students who created them is provided below each of the posters).

Incentives Scot Acre Patrick Gillespie Marc Compton Shawn Telford	Individuality Kerry Guiliano Aaron Moran Mike Bammer Julie Howe Addy Hamilton	Motivation Barb Bedford Cheryl Schaefer Hope Andres Stacey Schuh	Rewards Grace Bammer Mary Wever Jessica Steffel Sarah Blazo	Curiosity Craig McMichael Chloe Tingley Lial Miller Katie Lorey
Teamwork Melanie Hosbach Fiona Scott Andrew Melmoth	Rewards 2 Sarah Pickles Katie Shefren Joost Guttinger Renee Codsi	Mastery Theresa Hamilton Larissa Lisayo Miguel Herrera	Dreams Cheytoria Hickey Bridget Reed	Grades Kristi Dix Patricia Liff Rugh Gadson Olivia Shillings
Autonomy Frances Snowden, Jessica Maisonnave, Andrea Ouimetto	Mastery2 Paul Blackwell, Brigette Jensen, Candace Marcotte	Collaboration Bill Marland, Christina Popowski, Jillian Johnson, Jamie Perry	Creativity John Hogan Michelle Cox Sean Sweeny Rehb Rajab Alfred McDonnel	Financial Incentives Dean Halverson Ashley Priem Shaza Ahmed Lauren Cortesi Camiella Hudson
	Material Incentives Rawad Bon Hamadan Jason Shulha Eliza Mantyh Patty Kolinski	Motivation 2 Bossel Deiry Susie Dina JP Bennett Kelly Cunningham Kristin Bergeron

The TPACK Radio/Video show that we had created for ISTE is now available on Vimeo. I think this version is easier to embed and view (as opposed to a 21MB download, as it was the previous time around).

TPACK Radio/Video Show ISTE 2010 from Punya Mishra on Vimeo.

A fake radio/video show created for ISTE2010 by Punya Mishra with Matt Koehler (and a bunch of other people who are thanked in the video). We were asked to create a video for ISTE, a conference that neither of us (Punya or Matt) could attend. Our goal was to create an engaging 15 minute video that would convey our ideas about technology integration in teaching, specifically the TPACK framework. The entire thing (including the two Mastercard & UPS commercials) was scripted, shot and edited over 4 days. More details (and credits here)

Our ISTE Radio/Video show needed a few commercials to break the monotony – so we created a couple. Here is the first one, a take on the UPS / Whiteboard commercials. Watch and enjoy (director’s commentary provided below).

The idea for this video came from my wife, Smita. I was talking with her about possible commercials to spoof, and that we needed something that people would recognize right away. She suggested the UPS-whiteboard commercials and bingo! I knew this was the one. A bit of doodling on paper and watching some of the original commercials on YouTube later, the strong resemblance between the UPS logo and the intersection of the three circles (that make up TPACK) struck me. And, as they say, the rest just fell into place. One of the things nice about the UPS commercials is the manner in which the “long-haired guy” changes the image with little moves here and there. I think our version does the same, at two different levels. The first is the manner in which the seeming UPS logo is shown to really be the crucial meeting point of the three circles, and then, at the very end, how the color of the marker changes from green to red! Tiny touches but they make all the difference, if you ask me.

The star of the commercial is Mete Akcaoglu, a doctoral student in our program, selected for his hair (we needed someone with longer hair to correspond with the star of the actual commercials), his “cool” Turkish accent, and his acting ability. Essentially what happened was that Mete just happened to walk by my office and got immediately “volunteered” to be the star. Not that he had much choice I do think he did a great job.

We checked out a variety of places with whiteboards (meeting rooms etc.) but all of them had some problem or the other (excessive glare, strange reflections, and inadequate lighting). Finally, Leigh Wolf was gracious enough to lend us her office (even though, I am sure, it was a huge distraction). The commercial was filmed with a Flip camera and edited with iMovie. Matt Koehler found us the right music – and 20 minutes later, we had a final version.

You can see the commercial in “context” by going directly to the ISTE10 TPACK radio/video show, but be prepared to spend 15 minutes on the entire program.

I have been a big fan of Despair.com and its quirky, dark humor. I particularly love the demotivational posters, with their beautiful inspiring photographs coupled with some deeply cynical or depressing message.

Today students in my MAET summer program completed a unit on motivation. They read the standard Ed Psych motivational literature (Dweck etc.) and also watched the RSA / Daniel Pink video (that I had linked to here). And then, they created a series of demotivational posters. These posters were created in Google Presentation, with images from Flickr and most importantly they had to use their ideas from either the readings or from the Pink video. [Incidentally the video was not created by Daniel Pink, nor by RSA, but rather by Cognitive Media.]

Here is what they came up with, click on the words to see the posters. The names of the students who created them is provided below the titles.

Incentives Scot Acre Patrick Gillespie Marc Compton Shawn Telford	Individuality Kerry Guiliano Aaron Moran Mike Bammer Julie Howe Addy Hamilton	Motivation Barb Bedford Cheryl Schaefer Hope Andres Stacey Schuh	Rewards Grace Bammer Mary Wever Jessica Steffel Sarah Blazo	Curiosity Craig McMichael Chloe Tingley Lial Miller Katie Lorey

My friend and colleague Leigh Wolf forwarded me this article on Edward Tufte: The Many Faces (And Sculptures) Of Edward Tufte. I have been a fan of information design guru Edward Tufte’s work for years (decades?). I love his emphasis on clarity and simplicity in presenting information. I love the fact that he designs and publishes his own books (so that he can have full control over each and every aspect of the presentation). What I didn’t know of was his playful artistic side. It turns out that ET (as he is known) is also an artist, crafting giant metal sculptures in his “back yard” (if you can call the hundreds of acres that stretch behind his house a “back yard!”).

Over the past few years I have been thinking quite hard about the idea that creative people are not creative in just one area but rather tend to play within and across multiple disciplines or areas. Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein have in their book Sparks of Genius often talked about how the most creative scientists are polymaths, often having artistic and other interests that go beyond their immediate professional interests. In fact they argue, and I would tend to agree with them, that creativity cannot be forced into one box or domain. Creative individuals are curious about everything and often engage in creative activities in multiple areas, though they may specialize in just one area (usually the domain they are most known for).

This is true for the most creative people I know. For instance, consider Douglas Hofstadter (best known for his book Godel, Escher & Back and is work in Artificial Intelligence) dabbles in everything from mathematics to music, wordplay to art. Similarly Scott Kim (best know as a puzzle game designer) creates ambigrams and composes music, plays the drums and teaches mathematics using dance!

In my own way I have tried to do the same. Everything I do, from creating ambigrams to teaching, from photography to developing keynote presentations, from being a parent to advising students on their research, seems to me to be connected and inter-woven. I think my success as a researcher and scholar (to whatever extent I have been successful) derives from this “dabbling” across disciplines.

What is sad, however, is how much such “dabbling” is frowned upon. Through high-school and college, through graduate school and even as a faculty member, I have been advised, always by by well-meaning people, to focus, to find my niche, to become an expert on one thing. I have resisted it, mainly because knowing just one thing, seems, at least to me, such an impoverished way of being.

And I understand why I have received the advice I have. We live in a specialized world. A world where expertise is valued.  And an expert, after all, is someone who knows more and more about less and less. There is no space for dabbling in this world of.

But I wonder about that. I have a friend who is a successful professor of civil engineering. Turns out, that as he was growing up, what he really wanted to be, was a chef! I haven’t had a chance to talk to him about this but I wonder how his vision of being a chef influences what he does as a researcher and a teacher? Does it contribute (in some subconscious manner) to his work? Or has he suppressed it completely?

Either way I see it as a tragedy, in the first case because we haven’t developed a way of speaking of these influences, and in the second case because a possible, fruitful career was nipped in the bud.

The sad thing is that I am seeing school do the same thing to my kids, in fact to most kids I know. NCLB has not helped either. Don’t get me wrong. This is not an argument for some form of dilletantism (dabbling for the sake of dabbling). Not at all. What I am recommending (thanks to the Roob-Bernstein’s for this term) is polymathy. One of my students, Danah Henriksen, is currently working on a dissertation on looking for polymathy in teachers. As she says:

“Polymathy” may be thought of as an informed enthusiasm for more than one field of knowledge or expertise, or excellence in several realms that might seem distant from each other.  It has been suggested that what makes polymaths so successful and fluidly creative is an ability to cross-pollinate ideas and information.  People who open their minds to, and who learn from, multiple knowledge areas can apply new information and unique ways of thinking from one discipline into another.

This for me is the biggest reason for supporting such playing around in multiple areas. These experiences at the fringes (so to speak) of our professional lives, provide us with newer ways of being in the world. They allow us to see the world in new ways. They allow us to question things the field may have taken for granted. Just as Tufte says at the end of the piece, my goal, is to “make people see a little differently.” Turns out one of the best and easiest ways of doing so is by seeing through different disciplinary eyes.

We need to provide better opportunities for our students to do the same.

Back in 2007, I was second author on a paper titled Teacher as Filmmaker, in which we described an approach to teacher professional development that involved teachers creating short, evocative movies, which we called iVideos. You can read the paper and abstract (below).

Wong, D., Mishra, P., Koehler, M.J., & Siebenthal, 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.

In our Masters program in Educational Technology at Michigan State University, K-12 teachers create “iVideos” – short, two-minute, digital videos designed to evoke powerful experiences about educative ideas. For example, an iVideo might enable viewers to experience the vastness of space, the interconnection between people and their environment, the timeless themes in great literature, and other compelling subject-matter ideas. How might these teacher-made iVideos serve as catalysts for teacher technology education and professional development? We describe the conceptual foundation of iVideos by building on the metaphor of teacher as filmmaker – an idea that highlights how teachers and filmmakers both strive to create powerful experiences for their audiences. In doing so, we argue that teachers are enabled to transform ideas and practice by immersing themselves in deep pedagogical consideration of subject-matter, significance, audience, learning, epistemology, and aesthetics. We also discuss how this approach develops teachers’ competency and efficacy with technology.

A week or so ago I received an email from Dr. Matthew Kearney, from University of Technology, Sydney informing us that, inspired by our work (as laid out in the above paper) students in their “pre-service teacher education elective class chose to make some ‘idea videos’ on a range of current issues in K-12 education.” You can see these movies by going to

http://sites.google.com/site/teacherivideos/

It feels great to know that our work was useful (and even inspiring) to others. Dr. Kearney adds that:

I would like to invite any interested student teachers at MSU to view an ‘ivideo’ of interest from our gallery and leave their reactions as a ‘comment’ at the bottom of the relevant page. (Our student teacher ‘filmmakers’ will be monitoring these pages for any feedback / comments / questions on conceptual or technical aspects of their iVideos.)

PS Please feel free to forward this invitation to any other teacher education institutions / staff who may be interested in this exercise.

Please take a moment to check out these videos. They are quite well done and worth a moment of your time. Drop a comment if you can, it will mean a lot to the students.

I just got back from an extended trip to California (San Jose and San Diego). I will be posting a lot more about this trip but for now here are the slides from a symposium on “Strategies for teacher professional development of TPACK” organized by Joke Voogt of Twente University. The symposium consisted of 4 different presentations by faculty and graduate students from three different universities.

You can access a pdf of the proposal here and a copy of the slides here.

• Introduction to the symposium Joke Voogt, (Twente University)
• Technology integration in the science teacher preparation program in Kuwait: Becoming TPACK competent through design Ghaida Alayyar, Petra Fisser & Joke Voogt (Twente University)
• Developing TPACK by Design Punya Mishra, Matt Koehler, Tae Seob Shin, Leigh Graves Wolf & Mike DeSchryver (Michigan State University)
• Developing TPACK through teacher design teams: The case of pre-service mathematics teachers in Ghana Douglas Agyei & Joke Voogt (Twente University)
• The development of an instrument to assess teacher development of TPACK Denise Schmidt, Evrim Baran, Ann Thompson (Iowa State University), Punya Mishra, Matt Koehler, & Tae Shin (Michigan State University)

More details of the symposium can be found on Petra Fisser’s blog, here, here and here. Note: Petra blogs in Dutch but in an age of Google Translate how much of an issue is that!

TPACK Newsletter, Issue #7.1:
Special SITE & AERA Conference Issue

March-April 2010

Welcome to the seventh edition of the TPACK Newsletter, published four times each year between September and April. If you are not sure what TPACK is, please surf over to http://www.tpack.org/ to find out more.

Gratuitous Quote About Technology

“For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.”  ~Alice Kahn

In This Issue

-1.      Gratuitous Quote About Technology
0. In This Issue (–> You are here)
1. Update on Newsletter
2.        TPACK SIG Meeting at SITE 2010 in San Diego
3.        Recent TPACK Publications & Presentations
4.        Recent TPACK-Related Dissertations
5.        TPACK at California Council on Teacher Education Spring Conference
6.        Coming up: TPACK at SITE
7.        Coming up: TPACK at AERA
8.        TPACK Work in Progress
9.        New Hybrid Ph.D. Program at Michigan State (Connecting with TPACK)
10.      Learning and Doing More with TPACK
–.         Un-numbered miscellaneous stuff at the end

1. Update on Newsletter

The TPACK newsletter currently has 707 subscribers!  In addition to being a palindromic number, this also represents a 9.2% increase in membership during the last two months.

Many thanks to those of you who sent in corrections so quickly to version 7.0 of his newsletter! We have incorporated them in this 7.1 edition.

2. TPACK SIG Meeting at SITE 2010 in San Diego

The TPACK SIG meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, March 31 from 8 – 9 AM in the Marina 3 room at the SITE Conference 2010 in San Diego, California. Please mark your calendars. More information about TPACK-related papers and presentations at SITE can be found below.

There are some leadership opportunities in the SIG that may be of interest to members (faculty and graduate students). We hope to welcome many at the meeting. We look forward to seeing you there.

3. Recent TPACK Publications & Presentations
Below are several recent TPACK publications and presentations that we know about. If you know of others that were shared within the past several months, please let us know (tpack.news.editors@wm.edu).

Articles/Chapters

• Blanchard, M. R., Harris, J., & Hofer, M. (2010). Grounded tech integration: Science. Learning & Leading With Technology, 37(6). 32-34.
• Figg, C. & McCartney, R. (2010). Impacting academic achievement with student learners teaching digital storytelling to others: The ATTTCSE digital video project. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 10(1). Retrieved from http://www.citejournal.org/vol10/iss1/languagearts/article3.cfm
• Grandgenett, N., Harris, J., & Hofer, M. (2009). Grounded tech integration: Math. Learning & Leading With Technology, 37(3), 24-26.
• Groth, R., Spickler, D., Bergner, J., & Bardzell, M. (2009). A qualitative approach to assessing technological pedagogical content knowledge. Contemporary Issues in Technology & Teacher Education, 9(4), 392-411. Retrieved from http://www.citejournal.org/vol9/iss4/mathematics/article1.cfm
• Hardy, M. (2010). Enhancing preservice mathematics teachers’ TPCK. Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching, 29(1), 73-86. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/33136
• Kramarski, B. & Michalsky, T. (in press). Preparing preservice teachers for self-regulated learning in the context of technological pedagogical content knowledge. Learning and Instruction. Doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2009.05.003
• Lee, M. H. & Tsai, C. C. (2010). Exploring teachers’ perceived self-efficacy and technological pedagogical content knowledge with respect to educational use of the World Wide Web. Instructional Science, 38(1), 1-21. Retrieved from http://www.springerlink.com/content/d510480505435104/
• Pan, N., Lau, H., Lai, W. (2010). Sharing e-learning innovation across disciplines: An encounter between engineering and teacher education. Electronic Journal of e-Learning. 8(1). Retrieved from http://www.ejel.org/Volume-8/v8-i1/v8-i1-art-4.htm
• Tanti, M., & Moran, W. (2009). Warts and all: Integrating ICT in teacher training. International Journal of Learning, 16, 641-655.
• Van Olphen, M., Hofer, M., & Harris, J. (2009-10). Grounded tech integration: Languages. Learning & Leading With Technology. 37(4), 26-28.
• Wang, Q. (2009). Guiding teachers in the process of ICT integration: Analysis of three conceptual models. Educational Technology,
  49(5), 23-27. Retrieved from http://qywang.myplace.nie.edu.sg/Publications.htm
• Whitehouse, P., McCloskey, E., & Ketelhut, D. J. (2009). Online pedagogy design and development: New models for 21^st century online teacher professional development. In J. O. Lindberg & A. D. Olofsson (Eds.), Online learning communities and teacher professional development: Methods for improved education delivery (pp. 247-262). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
• Young, C., Hofer, M., & Harris, J. (2010). Grounded tech integration: English Language Arts. Learning & Leading With Technology, 37(5), 28-30.

Presentation(s)

Jamieson-Proctor, R., Finger, G. & Albion, P. (2010, April). Auditing the TPACK capabilities of final year teacher education students: Are they ready for the 21st century? Paper presented at the Australian Computers in Education Conference 2010, Melbourne, Australia. Retrieved from
http://acec2010.info/proposal/248/auditing-tpck-capabilities-final-year-teacher-education-students-are-they-ready-21st.pdf

4. Recent TPACK-Related Dissertations

The following TPACK-based dissertations have been released recently. There may be more… (and if so, you know whom to contact with that information

• Chase, E. (2009). Extension educators’ perceptions of the use of digital technology in their work. Michigan State University, Lansing, MI. AAT 3381427
• Nathan, E. J. (2009). An examination of the relationship between preservice teachers’ level of technology integration self-efficacy (TISE) and level of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). University of Houston, Houston, TX. AAT 3388727
• Sheffield, C. C. (2009). A multiple case study analysis of middle grades social studies teachers’ instructional use of digital technology with academically talented students at three high-performing middle schools. University of South Florida, Tampa, FL. AAT 3394182

5. TPACK at California Council on Teacher Education Spring Conference

The annual meeting of the California Council on Teacher Education (March 25 – 27, in San Jose) has a strong TPACK thematic focus. There will be keynote presentations and panel discussions led by TPACK regulars like Punya Mishra, Judi Harris, Glen Bull and Mario Kelly. http://www.ccte.org/conferences/

6. Coming up: TPACK at SITE 2010

Here is a list of presentations related to TPACK at the SITE conference at San Diego, March 29 – April 1. There are 34 papers, presentations, poster sessions and symposia related to TPACK that will be included in this conference. Please note the SIG meeting at 8 – 9 am on Wednesday, 3/31/10 as well. Specific locations and times for the presentations can be found on the SITE Conference Web site.

We have tried to capture all of the entries but if we missed yours (or one that you know about), do let us know (tpack.news.editors@wm.edu).

Tuesday, March 30

• SITE’s Digital Fabrication Initative Glen Bull, University of Virginia, USA; Gary Marks, SITE, USA; Nick Sanham, Aspex, UK; Willy Kjellstrom, University of Virginia, USA
• Digital Skills as a Basis for TPCK Leikny Ogrim, Oslo University College, Norway

Wednesday, March 31

• The Decision-Making Processes of Preservice Teachers as They Integrate Technology Charles R. Graham, Brigham Young University, USA; Nicolette Burgoyne, Brigham Young University, USA; Jered Borup, Brigham Young University, USA
• Differentiating TPACK Development: Using Learning Activity Types with Inservice and Preservice Teachers Mark Hofer, College of William and Mary, USA; Judith Harris, College of William and Mary, USA
• Strategies for Teacher Professional Development of TPACK, Part 1 & 2 Joke Voogt, University of Twente, Netherlands; Ann Thompson, Iowa State University, USA; Punya Mishra, Michigan State University, USA; Petra Fisser, University of Twente, Netherlands; Ghaida Allayar, Public Authority of Applied Education and Training, Kuwait; Douglas Agyei, University of Cape Coast, Ghana; Matthew Koehler, Michigan State University, USA; Tae Seob Shin, Michigan State University, USA; Leigh Graves Wolf, Michigan State University, USA; Mike DeSchryver, Michigan State University, USA; Denise Schmidt, Iowa State University, USA; Evrim Baran, Iowa State University, USA
• Raising the Bar for 21st Century Teacher Preparation Mark Warner, Kennesaw State University, USA; Cherry Steffen, Kennesaw State University, USA; Jim Cope, Kennesaw State University, USA
• Developing a Game-based Learning Environment in Classrooms: A Conceptual Model Wen-Hsiung Wu, National Kaohsiung University of Applied Science, Taiwan; Wei-Fan Chen, The Pennsylvania State University, USA
• A Case Study of Investigating Preservice Mathematics Teachers’ Initial Use of the Next-Generation TI-Nspire Graphing Calculators with Regard to TPACK Orhan Curaoglu, Middle East Technical University, Turkey; Lingguo Bu, Florida state University, USA; Lydia Dickey, fsu, USA; Hyewon Kim, fsu, USA; Recep Cakir, Amasya university, Turkey
  
• Using Online Videos in the Science Methods Classroom as Context for Developing Preservice Teachers’ Awareness of the TPACK Components Richard Hechter, University of Manitoba, Canada; Lynette Phyfe, University of Manitoba, Canada
• “Bit by Bit Putting it All Together” How a Holistic View of Assessment Changed Our Perception of the TPACK Framework Colleen Sexton, Governors State University, USA; Michael Gordon, Governors State University, USA; Kathleen Hickey, Governors State University, USA
• Reconsidering the T and C in TPACK: Repurposing Technologies for Interdisciplinary Knowledge Kristen Kereluik, Michigan State University, USA; Punya Mishra, Michigan State University, USA; Matthew Koehler, Michigan State University, USA
• Advancing K-8 Mathematics and Science Teachers Knowledge for Teaching with Technology through an Online Graduate Program Margaret Niess, Oregon State University, USA; Henry Gillow-Wiles, Oregon State University, USA
• Testing a TPACK-Based Technology Integration Assessment Rubric Judi Harris, College of William & Mary, USA; Neal Grandgenett, University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA; Mark Hofer, College of William & Mary, USA
• Aspiring to Reach 21st Century Ideals: Teacher Educators’ Experiences in Developing Their TPACK Mia Kim Williams, University of Northern Colorado, USA; Teresa Foulger, Arizona State University, USA; Keith Wetzel, Arizona State University, USA
  
• Auditing the TPACK Competence and Confidence of Australian Teachers: The Teaching With ICT Audit Survey (TWictAS) Peter Albion, University of Southern Queensland, Australia; Romina Jamieson-Proctor, University of Southern Queensland, Australia; Glenn Finger, Griffith University, Australia
• The Validation of an Instrument Measuring TPACK Nicolette Burgoyne, Brigham Young University, USA; Charles R. Graham, Brigham Young University, USA; Richard Sudweeks, Brigham Young University, USA
• Concerns-Based Conceptual Change: A Theory of Change for Teacher Education Philip Molebash, Loyola Marymount University, USA
• Expanding the Practice-Based Taxonomy of Characteristics of TPACK Kamini Jaipal, Brock University, Faculty of Education, Canada; Candace Figg, Brock University, Canada
• Taking TPACK to the Classroom: Teacher Candidates Get ‘Handy’ for Class Candace Figg, Brock University, Canada; Jenny Burson, LeTourneau University, USA

Thursday, April 1

• Measuring TPACK in a Preservice Teacher Education Course Utilizing a Blended Model of Instruction Rob Horgan, Queen’s University, Canada
• Coding Pre-Service Teacher Lesson Plans for TPACK Kristen Kereluik, Michigan State University, USA; Greg Casperson, Michigan State University, USA; Mete Akcaoglu, Michigan State University, USA
• Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK): A Content Analysis of 2006-2009 Print Journal Articles Mario Kelly, Hunter College, City University of New York, USA
• Values, Beliefs, and Perspectives: Teaching Online within the Zone of Possibility Created by Technology Kathryn Dirkin, CMU, USA; Punya Mishra, MSU, USA
• Using TPACK as a Model for School Development Kirsti Engelien, Department of Teacher Education and School Development, University of Oslo, Norway; Kjersti Stundal, Gjerdrum secondary school, Norway
• TPACK as Shared, Distributed Knowledge Hæge Nore, Akershus University College, Faculty of Technical and Vocational Teacher Education, Norway; Kirsti L. Engelien, University of Oslo, Department of Teacher Education and School Development, Norway; Monica Johannesen, Oslo University College, Faculty of Education and International Studies, Norway
• Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge for Music TeachersWilliam Bauer, Case Western Reserve University, USA
• Storytelling as a Strategy for Integrating Technologies into the Curriculum: An Empirical Study with Post-Graduate Teachers Clara Coutinho, Minho University – Braga – Portugal, Portugal
• Pre-Service Teacher Technology Integration: The Team-Taught Cohort Model and TPACK Grace Ward, University of Maine Farmington, USA; Theresa Overall, University of Maine Farmington, USA

Friday, April 2

• Must Technology Take Place in Mathematics and Science Pedagogy? – What Do Chinese Educators Think? Kun Shao, Webster University, USA
• Observational Measures of Technological, Pedagogical, Content Knowledge (TPACK) in the Integration of Laptop Computers in Elementary Writing Instruction Julie Mueller, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
• Hong Kong Home Economics Teachers’ Preparedness for Teaching with Technology Kitty Ho, University of Southern Queensland, Hong Kong; Peter Albion, University of Southern Queensland, Australia
• Student Engagement with the Authoring of Digital Media in Sixth Grade History Curby Alexander, University of Illinois at Springfield, USA
• Preparing Foreign Language Teachers to Implement a Technology-Rich Curriculum JungJin Kang, Michigan State University, USA; Xiaopeng Ni, Michigan State University, USA; Guofang Li, Michigan State University, USA
• Examining the Validity of the TPACK Framework From the Ground Up: Viewing Technology Integration Through Teachers’ Eyes. M Brooke Robertshaw, Utah State University, USA; Ronald B. Gillam, Utah State University, USA

7. Coming up: TPACK at AERA 2010

The annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association is scheduled for April 30 – May 4 in Denver, Colorado. TPACK will be well represented there, with approximately 12 presentations (that we could find) related to the construct.  They are:

(Symposia)

Perspectives on TPACK
Chair: Gerald A. Knezek (University of North Texas)
Discussant: Ann D. Thompson (Iowa State University)

• Exploring the nature of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge using Factor Analysis Deanna Archambault (Arizona State University), Joshua H. Barnett (Arizona State University)
• Lost and found in Translation: A TPACK Survey of Mid-Career Teacher Beliefs and Practice Lisa G. Hervey (North Carolina State University)
• Measuring the TPK Component of TPACK: An Alternative to Self-Assessment Andrew Frederick Barrett (Indiana University)
• Knowledge Growth in Teaching Mathematics-Science with Technology: Moving PCK to TPACK in Online Professional Development Maggie L. Niess (Oregon State University), Emily H. Van Zee (Oregon State University), Tina L. Johnston (Oregon State University), Henry Gillow-Wiles (Oregon State University)

Innovative Pathways to the Development of Teacher Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: Empirical Accounts From Preservice and In-Service Teachers
Chair: Chrystalla Mouza (University of Delaware)
Discussant: Ann Thompson (Iowa State University)

• Evidence of TPACK in Preservice Graduates’ Rationales for Future Technology Use Joan E. Hughes (University of Texas-Austin)
• Preservice Teachers’ Technology Integrated Planning: Contrasting Quality and Instructional Variety by Development Approach Mark J. Hofer (College of William & Mary), Neal Grandgenett (University of Nebraska-Omaha), Judith B. Harris (College of William & Mary), Karen Work Richardson (College of William & Mary)
• Using Classroom Artifacts to Judge Teacher Knowledge of Reform-Based Instructional Practices that Integrate Technology in Mathematics and Science Classrooms Maggie L. Niess (Oregon State University)
• Effects of Practice-Based Professional Development on Teacher Learning in Technology Integration Chrystalla Mouza (University of Delaware)
• GeoThentic: Designing and Assessing with Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Aaron Doering (University of Minnesota), Cassandra Scharber (University of Minnesota)

(Individual Papers)

• Developing TPACK in Mathematics Instruction. Andrew B. Polly (University of North Carolina-Charlotte)
• Using TPACK Without Knowing It: Preservice Teachers’ Perceptions of Integrating Instructional Technology in Social Studies. Erik Jon Byker (Michigan State University)
• The Continuing Development, Validation, and Implementation of a TPACK Assessment for Preservice Teachers Denise A. Schmidt (Iowa State University), Evrim Baran (Iowa State University), Ann D. Thompson (Iowa State University), Matthew J. Koehler (Michigan State University), Punya Mishra (Michigan State University), Tae Seob Shin (Michigan State University)

8. TPACK Work in Progress

Bob Isaacson, who works in the Faculty Development Division in the U.S. Army’s Defense Language Institute, shared a draft of a paper that he’s working on at present with us. It uses TPACK to describe “Training Requirements for Foreign Language Teaching Online.” In the paper, Bob concludes, “The TCPK construct can provide a conceptual framework for faculty development specialists to develop training that will enable foreign language teachers to make the transition from traditional face-to-face teaching to online distance teaching using both best pedagogical practices for teaching foreign languages at a distance and existing technology resources and tools.” If you would like to communicate with Bob about his work, please email him.

9. New Hybrid Ph.D. Program at Michigan State (Connecting with TPACK)

The idea of TPACK is deeply grounded in practice. Keeping this in mind, and in order the develop the next generation of TPACK-fluent scholars and researchers, the Educational Psychology and Educational Technology program at Michigan State University is now offering a hybrid doctoral program focused on the evolving roles of technology in learning. This cohort-based, blended program (which combines online coursework with intensive summer classes on campus) is designed for bright, established professionals currently working in K-12 schools, universities, policy centers, and research institutions who want to earn a Ph.D. while continuing in their current positions. The goal is to bring together a cohort of practitioners, using the powerful collaborative tools we now have, to create, explore and share; to engage in dialogue and dissent; to critique and conduct research; and to experiment with new technologies, new pedagogies and new content. To find out more about this program please click on the following links:

The official program Web site:

• http://edtechphd.com/

A few other Web sites/ blog posts that describe the program in greater detail:

• http://tinyurl.com/edtechphd1
• http://tinyurl.com/edtechphd2
• http://tinyurl.com/msutechphd

10. Learning and Doing More with TPACK
Interested in learning more about TPACK or getting more involved in the TPACK community?  Here are a few ideas:

• Visit and contribute to the TPACK wiki at: http://tpack.org /
• Join the TPACK SIG at: http://site.aace.org/sigs/tpack-sig.htm
• Join and contribute to the TPACK Google group at: http://groups.google.com/group/tpack/
• Review and provide feedback on the TPACK Learning Activity Types at: http://activitytypes.wmwikis.net/

Feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who might be interested in its contents. Even better, have them subscribe to the TPACK newsletter by sending a blank email to sympa@lists.wm.edu, with the following text in the subject line: subscribe tpack.news FirstName LastName (of course, substituting their own first and last names for ‘FirstName’ and ‘LastName’ — unless their name happens to be FirstName LastName, in which case they can just leave it as is).

If you have a news item that you would like to contribute to the newsletter, send it along to: tpack.news.editors@wm.edu If you are interested in volunteering to help run the newsletter (we need help!), send email to: tpack.news.editors@wm.edu

Standard End-Matter
If you have questions, suggestions, or comments about the newsletter, please send those to tpack.news.editors@wm.edu. If you are subscribed to the tpack.news email list, and — even after reviewing this impressive publication — you prefer not to continue to receive the fruits of our labors, please send a blank email message to sympa@lists.wm.edu, with the following text in the subject line:  unsubscribe tpack.news

- Judi, Matt, Mario, and Punya

Judi Harris, Chair, College of William & Mary
Matt Koehler, Vice-Chair, Michigan State University
Mario Kelly, Futon, Hunter College
Punya Mishra, Recliner, Michigan State University

My friend and colleague, Curt Bonk, Professor at Indiana University (also known as Travelin’ Ed Man) recently interviewed me about our new hybrid Ph.D. program. For those interested in the program (and maybe even those who are not) can read it by going to Want an E-Ph.D. in Ed Tech?: An E-nlightening interview with Punya Mishra from Michigan State University. Curt asked some good questions thus providing me an opportunity to talk about this new program within the broader context of how technology is changing higher ed.

Enjoy.

A few weeks ago I had posted about the hybrid Ph.D. program that we recently announced. There has been terrific interest in this program (but we are still looking for more people – so keep the emails and questions coming).

As we were reviewing the various emails we are receiving, it struck me that we (here at MSU) have not really done a good job of capturing all the different options we offer to practicing educators (teachers and administrators in K-12, community college and higher education settings).

The goal in each of these programs is to work collaboratively with practitioners to creatively integrate technology in their practice. Built around the TPACK framework these programs run the gamut from a 10 credit certificate in Ed Tech, to a 30 credit master’s degree, from an Edupunk orientated refresher that can be taken for credit or no-credit (for those who already have a master’s), to two versions of a doctoral program (on-campus and the new substantially online hybrid program).

This led to our designing a graphic that attempts to capture all of our different initiatives. (Thanks also to Leigh Wolf and Robin Dickson for their input. Any errors are of course mine, and mine alone.) The blue arrows indicate “points of entry” i.e. spots that you can enter the program.

These “blocks” build on each other but there is no obligation to do the whole thing. Each block is self-contained i.e. there are multiple “off-ramps” from the program. Also, classes are customized to the needs and requirements of practitioners and can be taken in a variety of formats: online, face to face (on campus, off campus and abroad) as well as hybrid combinations thereof. For instance, we have students who have taken some certificate courses over weekends, at sites near their schools, followed that with some coursework on campus and online (over summer and regular semester) and received their master’s by completing their courses with one final summer, abroad.

Read the rest of this entry »

Our very own Leigh Wolf is quoted in a story in today’s State News. Check out, Education unlocked: MSU professors use open courseware to provide class materials for students

Leigh manages to bring in the MAET program in to the picture (why am I not surprised?) and how we have been using some of these technologies for recruitment and community building. Here is a quote (though you should go read the entire article, right?)

Read the rest of this entry »

I had written about the EduPunk movement earlier, in fact had even designed a logo for it.

A brief description of Edupunk can be found on Wikipedia (a google search will reveal many more). Wikipedia describes it as follows:

Edupunk is an approach to teaching and learning practices that result from a do it yourself (DIY) attitude. The New York Times defines it as “an approach to teaching that avoids mainstream tools like Powerpoint and Blackboard and instead aims to bring the rebellious attitude and D.I.Y. ethos of ’70s bands like The Clash to the classroom.”

Well, I am no expert on 70′s bands but the EduPunk title does appeal to me. It appeals to me because for the longest tie the main attraction of digital technology, to me, has been this DIY attitude, the fact that I can, over an evening or two, create a stop-motion movie with my kids (here or here), or mashup a commercial, or, in this case, create my own course website. The final product may not have the finish or sheen of a commercial product but it is in some key way “authentic.” It is mine. It embodies me, my sensibility, my approach, my vision in ways that other products can not.

For my entire tenure here at MSU I have constructed my own course-websites, cobbling them together with what I have often jokingly called “duct-tape and magic.” I have even written about this, long before the EduPunk moniker came along (see links at end of post). What I want to describe in this post are my current experiments (for my CEP817 Learning Technology by Design course) using using WordPress as a learning management system, and boy am I impressed!! [My partner in crime in this is Kristen Kereluik, a graduate student in our program.]

Read the rest of this entry »

Scott McLeod over at Dangerously Irrelevant posted a video of a CNN story about the Ron Clark Academy and asked whether something like this was scalable?

Watch the video as you ponder this question.

This is a question often asked of me, when I am conducting creativity workshops or talking about passionate teaching. In fact I was asked this just a couple of days ago when I was at the Dexter Schools talking about 21st Century Learning and Creativity. This issues comes up most when I am in India where the magnitude of the problems is just so large that scalability is always an issue.

My response to this typically has been quite straightforward. I say that I can’t think that big. I have a congenital defect that renders me incapable of thinking of projects on a large scale. I cannot comprehend states and nations. I can barely comprehend a district. What I am most comfortable with is one classroom. What this does is color my way of thinking about innovation, pushing me towards the position that change can be effected one classroom at a time. When I teach my summer courses as a part of the MAET program, I usually have 25 students, a number I can comprehend. My goal is to touch these 25, to connect with them, and to raise within them a passion for using technology to teach subject matter. If I manage to touch even a fifth of them and they go back to their classes inspired to do something new and better, hey I have succeeded.

This is not to say that policies don’t matter that social change can’t happen. Just that I am personally incapable of thinking in grand generalities. I have a feeling that my skepticism regarding large scale efforts comes from my deep suspicion that visions and plans mutate in often detrimental ways when they move out of the local. So I stay in the local, and frankly that is good enough for me.

Now Scott may think that this is a cop-out and not necessarily a response to his question, but sadly that is the best I can give. The Ron Clark Academy works well where it does. Just training a bunch of teachers in the techniques used there and asking them to implement it in their classrooms will not necessarily translate into better student achievement. For instance, I am not sure that the Ron Clark approach would work in India, a country with very different cultural and historical expectations of what teaching and learning could/should be. So I choose to withhold judgment and work harder with the people I know I can influence.

Leigh Wolf, my partner in crime as far as the MAET program goes, recently presented at Ignite Lansing. She talked about her two passions, teaching and food (not sure which order to place these). Specifically she talked about food photography and the connections she sees between what she does there and her other life as an educator. It is a lovely presentation, and the video is now available on YouTube. Take a look.

I spent some time last week with each of the MAET cohorts at Plymouth England. I have blogged about my time with Year 1 here and Year 2 here (as well as some other posts here and here). This is about what I did with the Year 3 cohort. As usual, I did my TPACK and creativity routine. Some of the poems and photos taken by the students are archived below.

Here’s a haiku by John Arcay
Many Ideas
Involves tweaking the right Knobs
Creativity

Here’s a song about the new NEW, Novel Effective Whole
(To be sung to the tune of The Beatles’ “I’m Looking Through You”)

I’m looking through you
with new ideas
The Novel remix
is relaxing
Making effective
Integration
Can be the whole
For all we know!

Bindu’s NEW Recipe
(Using the 5 steps of creativity and the criteria for creativity)

Preparation: A trip to the market
Incubation: Marinate!
Insight: Season to taste
Evaluation: Proof of the pudding is in the eating
Elaboration: Invite your friends and have a party
NEW?Novel, Efective, and Whole

And finally the photos from the letter search assignment. Since there were 19 students in the class (one more than the Year 2) I modified the assignment I had given Year 2, and just added an exclamation mark! So in essence, I did the same song and dance routine about the solution to Shulman’s three pathologies of learning being Relax, Repose, Reteach! (note the additional exclamation mark). And of course at the end, all was revealed. As it turns out, what they had been searching for were the letters to the words Explore Create Share! (once again with the “!” mark). Here are the two images.

Relax Repose Reteach!

Explore Create Share

Last Friday we celebrated the latest graduates from the MAET off campus program. These were students, who for the most part, have completed the MAET program over three summers in Plymouth, England. We here at MAET headquarters are extremely proud of their achievements. We had a small ceremony to celebrate their success and to wish them all the best for the future.

A video of the ceremony can be seen below. I, as representing the College of Ed and the MAET program, was asked to give a small welcome speech and you can see that in the video as well. I am including below, for the record, the text of what I said…

Text of welcome speech by Punya Mishra, Director MAET program
July 24, 2009
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