Richard Olsen over in his blog has an extended posting titled The TPACK Framework is fundamentally flawed. It is a long and thoughtful post and I recommend everyone to read it.
I have posted a short response to his posting (it is under moderation but should show up in a while). In the mean-time I am posting my response here – for the record.
Richard,
Thank you for your extended and thoughtful post on the TPACK framework. There is a lot here to respond to but I will be brief…
I think you would be surprised to learn just how much I agree with what you are saying. In fact in our original TCRecord piece we write something along the lines of “Clearly, separating the three components (content, pedagogy, and technology) in our model is an analytic act and one that is difficult to tease out in practice.” As I see it you are arguing that it is impossible (or even wrong) to tease these out. I would disagree.
In my experience the TPACK framework allows different people to see different things. To content area teachers, it allows them to see the value of technologies in representing and engaging with content; to teacher trainers it allows them to think about the significance of content and technology; and to techie types, it shows that there is more to teaching than the tool – it has to do with pedagogy and content.
Every once in a while I meet someone like yourself – someone for whom the TPACK is intuitive – so that breaking things up into pieces just seems wrong. And for the most part I agree – again as we said in our article: “Viewing any of these components in isolation from the others represents a real disservice to good teaching.”
But these ideas are not intuitive to most people – and this is where I think the TPACK framework comes in useful – as a scaffolding to help people develop in their thinking about curriculum, content, technology and pedagogy.
I agree that is IS wrong is to essentialize the components of the TPACK framework (which I see a lot of people doing – but that is their doing not inherent in how we wrote/conceptualized it). The goal really should be to think about this sweet spot at the center – where these pieces come together. Now whether you call that good pedagogy for content learning – or good pedagogy with technology for content learning is at some level immaterial (I think).
I don’t know if you have had a chance to read the handbook chapter that Matt and I had written. You can find it here
I think this has a better description of the technology issue that you raised – that I (being lazy) don’t have the time to get into.
And finally, there is a famous saying among academics that goes, I don’t care if you disagree with me, just make sure to cite me and spell my name correctly.
I bring that up because you got the first part (citing) but got my name wrong… it is Mishra not Misha
Every Christmas-break our family creates a stop-motion video new year’s greeting card. We have been doing this for 4 years or so and it is an incredibly fun way to spend time together. It has become a “signature” thing we do as a family. Anyway this year was no exception – though it took us much longer than before to come up with a good idea – and then to execute it was another challenge. Anyway, here it is (on Vimeo).
A very wonderful holidays and a very happy new year to all of you,
from Shreya, Soham, Smita & Punya
Just a few comments on the making of these videos. First, all our new-year videos are stop-motion videos. That’s how we made the first one and it has stuck. Second, all these videos are somewhat typographical in nature – playing with words and their representation. Third, these videos rarely feature us either individually or as a family. A hand or a still-frame may show up once in a while but for the most part our videos are made with inanimate objects.
This year I tried to change all three of these, suggesting that we make a live action video, with us as actors – and have some kind of a puzzle that was not related to words. After spending days thinking about this, working with various ideas, this whole line of thought was vetoed down by both Soham and Shreya. It was interesting to me that over time we had not only become a family that makes videos but a family that makes stop motion videos! How cool an identity is that! Of course, this meant that we then had to start over from scratch to come up with something that fit what we had done in the past.
Speaking of videos made in the past, you can see them by following the links below:
I have been haunted the past week or so with the scandal enveloping Penn State. Much as been written about it already – and I really have nothing fundamentally new to offer to this discussion. What I did want to share was a parallel that struck me recently about these terrible events and a lovely yet horrifying short story I had read a long time ago.
“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (Variations on a theme by William James) is a haunting short story by Ursula K. Le Guin. It is a short, sparse story, almost a parable, with almost no distinct characters.
It is about a beautiful city called Omelas, a city of happy people unburdened by any pain or sorrow. But this happiness is the result of a faustian bargain—a bargain where the happiness of all is dependent on having one child bear all the pain and sorrow of the entire city. This child lives in a dark, basement room, neglected and in constant pain. The story says that many people, though initially shocked, learn to accept this and seek to lead fruitful lives in Omelas. However, the story concludes that, there are always a few, who walk away, from the city, never to return. The story asks the question of whether it is, “right for the happiness of many to be built on pain and sorrow for one.”
I know that my synopsis does not do justice to the story. Do read it for yourself right here. Yes, right now. I can wait.
OK. Welcome back. Now wasn’t that a great story. I truly think it is one of the greatest stories ever written (at lease one of the greatest I have ever read).
So now coming back to the sorry state of affairs at Penn State. It seems to me that the Happy Valley in some sense struck a bargain similar to the one in the story. The entire football and university staff who knew or suspected what was going on chose to turn a blind eye to what was going on. The graduate assistant who stumbled upon the scene in the showers chose to let the child suffer to protect the good name of the program. The suffering of one child was worth it in exchange for maintaining the reputation of the football team or the University. The students who rioted after the firing of Joe Paterno were willing to make the same choice as well.
This is truly sad. I just hope that in the days and weeks to come, more and more people will have the courage to walk away from the Omelas.
I was recently at the Iowa Technology & Education Connection (ITEC) conference in Des Moines IA. I had a wonderful time meeting old friends and making some new ones. I was also asked to be part of a video that would be shared with ITEC members and other online sources. I received an email today letting me know that this video is now available on the ITEC website (and for embedding).
This was one of the most pleasant and professional interviews I have ever been involved in and I like how the final video has turned out. I think it is a pretty good introduction to not just the TPACK framework and our conceptualization of its development but also to our recent work on 21st century learning, creativity and trans-disciplinary learning. Enjoy.
To all of us who value creativity and design the passing of Steve Jobs is the passing of an era. I know my world changed when I first saw the Macintosh. I was a freshly minted electrical engineer who was trying to get out of engineering because there was something there that didn’t feel right. I was trying to move into design and education and still keep that technology connection. And it was at this time of inchoate confusion that I saw the Mac. The elegance, the simplicity, the emphasis on design and aesthetics… it showed me a way and inspires me even today.
It is funny, the two courses are teach in the MAET program are CEP817 Learning Technology by Design and CEP818Creativity in Teaching and Learning. Design, Creativity and their relationship to Teaching and Learning – four words that more than anything else define who I am. And Steve Jobs has been a big part of all four.
Over the past few weeks I have been experimenting with using my iPad as a drawing/painting tool. The sketches below were created by tracing on an existing image – usually a photograph. So this is not “freehand” drawing per se – but given my limited talents that may not be such a bad idea.
What you need for this is a drawing/sketching App that allows you to draw in layers. You place your photo on one layer and draw on the layer above it. This way you don’t mess up the photograph and you can separate your sketch from the photo. Once you are done, all you do is delete the photograph-layer and there it is, a lovely (well that’s subjective) hand-drawn sketch.
As you can see I started with simple line-drawings, and over time have tried branching out a bit, through the use of shading and now, even color.
A typical sketch takes around 20 – 30 minutes (sometimes less) – and I have found it just a fantastic way to relax. Creative relaxation… what else can one wish for.
The Hindu god Ganesh (the elephant-headed one) is celebrated across India, and the world, around this time of the year. The Hindu community in Lansing is no exception. A couple of days ago I was asked to take pictures of a music program at the local temple.
It was a great evening full of friends, food and devotional music. I am not a very religious person but there is something about devotional music (irrespective of which religion it may be) that always touches a chord with me.
Anyway, here are the pictures I took the other day. I particularly loved capturing the moon over the temple. Enjoy.
Steve Jobs retired as CEO of Apple this past week. The Wall Street Journal marked this event by creatingSteve Job’s Best Quotes compendium. There are all worth reading – but a couple stood out for their connection to this course.
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something… It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. [Playboy, Feb. 1, 1985]
A large part of my creativity course, CEP818, (announcement here) has this idea of creativity as “connections” at its core. One of the goals of the course is to provide a set of trans-disciplinary tools that can help increase the possibility of making such connections.
And finally, here’s my personal favorite quote from Jobs that speaks to the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of the work we do (be it design or teaching).
When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through. [Playboy, Feb. 1, 1985]
Jim Garrison and A. G. Rud have a wonderful article on TCRecord on Reverence in Classroom Teaching. Though, reverence may be “too exalted a word to associate with the practical and often mundane activities of teaching,” it appears to me that ignoring these deeper impulses impoverishes us as individuals and as a society. Framing teaching as being just about imparting skills, and knowledge, aimed at achieving instrumental goals (jobs, career and the like) misses something crucial. As they write:
… although teaching students involves imparting knowledge, it is also a calling with other dimensions beyond the cognitive … It is about the formation of minds, the molding of destinies, the creation of an enduring desire in students not only to know, but also to care for others, appreciate beauty, and much more. In some sense of the word, teaching is a spiritual, although not necessarily religious, activity. When done well, it cultivates human intimacy and allows teachers to find creative self-expression in classroom community.
The authors define reverence as follows:
Reverence is comprehension of human limitation, imperfection, and our appropriate place in the cosmos as a consequence of the humility that arises from feelings of awe, wonder and admiration before something or someone that meets at least one of the following conditions: (1) Something or someone that cannot be changed or controlled by human means; something we are powerless to alter. (2) Something or someone we cannot create. (3) Something we cannot completely understand. (4) Something or someone transcendent; something supernatural.
Though I have not used the word “reverence” in my own writing / thinking I have often said the same thing about the role of the aesthetic in teaching in learning and the need for us to develop a language that allows us to include these dimensions of the human experience in our work. I have some reservations about the word “reverence” – mainly because of the religious connotations which can sometimes lead conversations into directions one may not necessarily want to go. (Though, I must add, that Garrison and Rud, take pains to write that “teaching is a spiritual, although not necessarily religious, activity.”)
Some examples from my previous writing on this blog that allude to similar ideas are provided below.
I want to end with something I wrote about the movie 2001 A Space Odessey:
2001 is a movie of big ideas: about what it means to be human, what is our relationship to technology, about our place in the cosmos, and our inability to answer some of these questions. 2001, thus, is a profound, deep and thoughtful attempt to use the medium of film to explore these ideas. And the style Kubrick chooses is intensely visual, deliberately paced, with minimal dialog. The first section of the movie has no dialog because there are no thoughts to express and no words to express them with. This is mirrored in the third and final section which has no dialogs because thoughts have far outstripped the ability of words to convey meaning. The section in between, set somewhere in the near future (as the 1960?s would imagine 2001 to be) has words, but even here it is amazing just how few, and ineffectual they are. Humans for the most part seem remote and disconnected from each other and, strangely enough, the most engaging character is the computer HAL!.
As is clear, 2001 is a ambitious movie (some would even say too ambitious). But it does do one thing right – it asks the right questions and tries to come up with an answer. And it does so in an ambiguous manner, allowing for multiple interpretations and readings. And that is its strength. It seeks, through the medium of film, to penetrate a “fundamental disparity between the way we perceive the world, including our own experience in it, and the way things actually are” (Dalai Lama quoted by Eberhart). That this is an effort doomed to failure is neither here nor there. In fact, the last line of dialog in the film speaks to this very possibility of failure: “Its origins and purpose [are] still a total mystery.” In the movie this dialog is about a black monolith – but works as aptly for the universe we live in.
In fact, as I think about it, 2001 is a deeply reverent movie. The question I have is whether we have created similar spaces for reverence in our classrooms? Have we even considered it? Or have we killed the idea with our focus on No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top?
This morning I was at the doctor’s office and picked up a dated (February, 2011) New Yorker magazine and discovered a great essay by Adam Gopnik: The Information: How the Internet gets inside us. I am not sure how I missed this the first time around but Gopnik does a great job of writing about technology and its influences, under the guise of reviewing a series of recent books about the topic. He is sometimes funny (see his take down of Clay Shirky) and often insightful. I do recommend reading the entire article but here are a couple of quotes, just to give you a sense of his voice. This is how he starts his essay, reminding us just how magical these new technologies are. I am reminded of Clarke’s Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
When the first Harry Potter book appeared, in 1997, it was just a year before the universal search engine Google was launched. And so Hermione Granger, that charming grind, still goes to the Hogwarts library and spends hours and hours working her way through the stacks, finding out what a basilisk is or how to make a love potion. The idea that a wizard in training might have, instead, a magic pad where she could inscribe a name and in half a second have an avalanche of news stories, scholarly articles, books, and images (including images she shouldn’t be looking at) was a Quidditch broom too far. Now, having been stuck with the library shtick, she has to go on working the stacks in the Harry Potter movies, while the kids who have since come of age nudge their parents. “Why is she doing that?” they whisper. “Why doesn’t she just Google it?
This is how Gopnik describes Clay Shirky:
… the author of “Cognitive Surplus” and many articles and blog posts proclaiming the coming of the digital millennium—is the breeziest and seemingly most self-confident. “Seemingly,” because there is an element of overdone provocation in his stuff (So people aren’t reading Tolstoy? Well, Tolstoy sucks) that suggests something a little nervous going on underneath.
I think this attitude (Tolstoy sucks) is something that has bothered me greatly. Do we have to demean Tolstoy in order to prove the superiority of our new toys? I recently, during a trip to France, re-read (after 30 years or so) Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It took me a while to get used to the rhythms of the language, but once I did, it was a wonderful experience, and brought home to me the beauty of a delicately crafted complex sentence, something I think we may have lost to a certain extent today. Again, just to make it clear, I am not making a Nicholas Carr, “technology is making us shallow” argument here, not the least because I read the book mostly on my iPad / iPhone and I doubt I would have read it otherwise.
Incidentally, Gopnik is as critical of the nay-sayers of today’s technologies. Writers like like Nicholas Carr, William Powers and Sherry Turkle receive their fair share of scorn (though I am not including any more quotes here).
Finally I would like to end with Gopnik’s commentary on how we often see new technologies as both the greatest and the worst things to have happened to us (at least till the next technology comes along).
… at any given moment, our most complicated machine will be taken as a model of human intelligence, and whatever media kids favor will be identified as the cause of our stupidity. When there were automatic looms, the mind was like an automatic loom; and, since young people in the loom period liked novels, it was the cheap novel that was degrading our minds. When there were telephone exchanges, the mind was like a telephone exchange, and, in the same period, since the nickelodeon reigned, moving pictures were making us dumb. When mainframe computers arrived and television was what kids liked, the mind was like a mainframe and television was the engine of our idiocy. Some machine is always showing us Mind; some entertainment derived from the machine is always showing us Non-Mind.
I was a guest on WDET’s Craig Fahle Show yesterday. The topic was the the recently passed Missouri law that bans teachers from interacting with students on Facebook in order to protect students from sexual assault. I find this a singularly silly waste of time by the legislators of the State of Missouri and I tried to make this point, in different ways, during the interview. You can listen to the segment and let me know if I was successful or not. You can listen to the segment here.
This was my first interview on a radio show… so let me know how I did and what your take is on this issue.
I have, for a long time, been interested in the Droste effect – a “specific kind of recursive picture… [in which] an image exhibiting the Droste effect depicts a smaller version of itself in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. This smaller version then depicts an even smaller version of itself in the same place, and so on” [from Wikipedia]
The effect gets its name from “the image on the tins and boxes of Droste cocoa powder, one of the main Dutch brands, which displayed a nurse carrying a serving tray with a cup of hot chocolate” which in turn repeats the same image (just in small size) and so on… for ever. In fact when I visited the Netherlands a couple of years ago, I made it a point to pick up a box of Droste cocoa power – just so that I could have a box of my own! This is what the box looks like:
Over the years I have tried to play with this but my attempts have been crude at best – more a function of my limited knowledge of Photoshop than anything else. All this changed last Friday, when I found out about the Droste App for the iPhone/iPad. I bought a copy and spent the weekend playing with it. It has been great fun and below are some images I created. Enjoy.
Matt Koehler just created a webpage that tracks the citations of our original TCRecord article, as reported by Google Scholar, in real time. The reference is as follows:
You will note that in this paper we call the framework TPCK (not TPACK). That came much later. At this time Google Scholar indicates that there are over 550 citations to this article. Additionally, curve gives no signs of flattening off. It is a cool piece of php programming and makes us feel good too!
I am including a screen shot of chart below, but for the continually updated page you will need to go to Matt’s website.
I am in Paris as a part of EduSummIT: Building a Global Community of Policy-Makers, Educators, and Researchers to Move Education into the Digital Age. EduSummIT is organized by UNESCO (along with other partners) and brings together over 120 scholars, policy makers from over 40 countries. I am part of a Thematic Focus Group emphasizing 21st century learning. I will be posting more information here over the next few days but for now, I thought it may be good to include a couple of my related publications here.
Mishra, P., & Kereluik, K. (2011). What 21st Century Learning? A review and a synthesis. Paper presented at SITE2011, Nashville TN.
Abstract: The discussion of 21st century skills has become increasingly prevalent in educational discourse and several organizations have developed 21st century frameworks. This papers seeks to compare prominent 21st century frameworks to both provide clarity on what it actually means to teach and learn in the 21st century and to find common themes across frameworks.
Mishra, P., Koehler, M.J., & Henriksen, D. (2011). The Seven Trans-Disciplinary Habits of Mind: Extending the TPACK Framework Towards 21 st Century learning. Educational Technology, 51(2) 22-28.
Abstract: In this article we examine the need for fostering transformative learning, emphasizing the roles that trans-disciplinary thinking and recent technologies can play in creating the transformative teaching and learning of the 21st century. We introduce the Technological, Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework as a starting point for discussing the special kinds of knowledge, skills, and understanding that teachers require in order to become effective classroom mediators of transformative learning experiences. Within this framework, we propose seven cognitive tools needed for success in the new millennium, and describe examples of how teachers can repurpose digital technologies to use these cognitive tools. We explore the implications for research and practice.
Pauline Kael is regarded to be one of the best film reviewers to have ever lived. Sam Sacks has a piece on Kael in which he describes her style of film review, one based less on academic nitpicking and the presence (or absence) of directorial flourishes than on her personal aesthetic response to cinema. She is quoted as saying that there is only one rule in filmmaking:
There is only one rule: Astonish us! In all art we look and listen for what we have not experienced quite that way before. We want to see, to feel, to understand, to respond in a new way.
I read this quote and immediately realized that this rule applies to teaching as well. I have often described teaching as doing two things – making the strange familiar (an eclipse of the sun is caused by the moon falling into the earth’s shadow) or making the familiar strange (all matter is essentially empty space). What is common is the sense of surprise we experience in both cases.
It appears to me that very often we forget the value of astonishment and awe in teaching and learning. This is where the quote above really connects with my idea of teaching. Repeating the quote but by changing just one word—replacing “art” with “teaching.”
There is only one rule: Astonish us! In all teaching we look and listen for what we have not experienced quite that way before. We want to see, to feel, to understand, to respond in a new way.
How do we as educators meet this goal of “astonishing us all.”
Many years ago I got bitten by the Ambigram bug and before I knew it I had created hundreds! This was of course long before Dan Brown and Angels and Demons made ambigrams wildly popular. It has been fun to see what was once a fringe activity take on a wider popularity. There was a time that I could actually count the number of ambigram artists on the fingers of my hand, and, in fact, most of us knew each other, either formally or informally. Things are very different today as a Google search will easily reveal, but this also means that keeping track of all that is going on in the ambigram field is extremely difficult.
Over the past few months I have been talking with Mark Hunter a gentleman who is trying to make high quality ambigrams accessible to more people, and to raise awareness of ambigrams worldwide. He is doing this through two different web sites.
He is also the owner of Ambigram.com, which seeks to be an almost one stop site for all you need to know about ambigrams. He told me about how he spent a considerable sum to purchase the Ambigram.com domain name and has worked hard to grow its membership. He has been quite successful in this and in fact they they recently announced their new Ambigrammy Awards! (How cool is that.) He also maintains a list of artists practicing this craft (your’s truly being one of them).
A few weeks ago I had written about an email that I received from an eighth grader in Colorado. Jake, a budding poet, was interested in learning more about me in the context of some palindromic poetry I had written many years ago. I wrote back to Jake (you can see the correspondence here) and a couple of days ago I received another email from him, this time containing a palindromic poem written by him. With his permission, I am including his email and poem below:
Punya,
Here is the palindromic poem that I wrote recently, but I made it so that the words are reversed instead of just the lines. It adds another layer of difficulty to creating it, and I recommend trying it if you get the chance.
Falling Snow
snow falling gently
on stomping feet
cold stinging
the teasing and laughing children
sculpted beautifully – crystals form
flakes dancing gracefully
tumble and spin
spin and tumble
gracefully dancing flakes
form crystals – beautifully sculpted
children laughing and teasing the
stinging cold
feet stomping on
gently falling snow
How awesomely cool is that! I wrote back to him right away saying
Jake. This is awesome!!!! I just shared it with my family and we were unanimous in our appreciation and praise for your achievement. Not only is it a doubly palindromic poem, an achievement in and of itself, it is a wonderful poem in it’s own right….
Thank you so much for sharing this with me. It completely made my day.
Don’t you just love the open-architecture of the web (and why I resist the closed worlds of Facebook).
I am currently working on a poetry research project for school, and one of the requirements is researching five different poets. While looking for people who wrote palindromic poetry, I found your website and decided to use you in my project. The only problem is that I can’t find much information about you for my research. If you could, please respond to this e-mail with a little information about your history (i.e.-date and place of birth, family relations, etc.) as well as your inspiration for writing your palindromic poems. Thank you for your support!!!!!
Sincerely, Jake
P.S.- I am an eighth grader from Colorado and an aspiring poet.
Now I don’t consider myself a poet in any serious sense of the word (my dabbling in mathematical poetry or palindromic poetry notwithstanding). But it is great feeling when something you create and put out there in the world connects with someone else, someone who you would never otherwise have met or gotten to know. Here is what I wrote back to Jake:
Dear Jake –
Thank you so much for writing to me. I am honored to make it to your list of poets and glad that you are interested in palindromic poetry.
As for my history: I am professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing MI. I am originally from India where I studied engineering and design before coming to the US and getting my PhD. My wife is a graphic designer and I have two kids: my son who is a freshman in high school and my daughter who is in 6th grade.
Ever since I was a kid I have always been interested in puzzles and mathematics and poetry and visual design. That I think led to a habit of playing with words and images… so I do a lot of doodling and sketching (specially when I in meetings). I am fond of asking questions and looking at things around me in new ways. For instance, I love photography, on my Flickr site you will find photos of silly things like finding alphabets in cracks, and faces in everyday things. See this link and this one…
Then there are the videos I make with my kids. For instance see the new year’s card we made recently.
This also led to my creating ambigrams, which are words that are written in a special ways so that they can be read multiple ways. You can find a bunch of such designs on my website.
So I guess, palindromic poetry emerged out this desire or propensity to see the world in weird ways. And the challenge of writing poems that read the same backward and forward was inherently interesting. I particularly enjoyed writing ones that flipped in their meaning when you cross the half-way point. For instance in the poem “Me as I sit” the poem switches from me watching you to you watching me!
Finally, as must have noticed, from the dates, most of these were written a bunch of years ago when I was a graduate student at the University of Illinois. I haven’t written too many recently but the fact that they are on my website leads people to them – and I form all kinds of cool connections – such as the email I just received from you. A year or so ago I heard from someone who uses my poetry to teach poetry to inmates in prison (how cool is that!). You can read about that here.
That’s all for now.. I would love to read any palindromic poetry you may have written, if you are comfortable sharing them with me. Thank you again for your interest in my work. I look forward to hearing from you and let me know if there is anything else you need to know.
take care ~ punya
Note: I got Jake’s (and his parent’s) permission to post our correspondence on this blog under the condition that I not include his email address or other contact information.
Many moons ago I had written about the idea of the web as small pieces loosely connected (read Gandhi, ambigrams, creativity & the power of small pieces loosely joined) that allow people to pursue their passions and share it with the world at large. This is what gives the web its power, and this is also why I am not as comfortable with the barricaded worlds created by Facebook, which would not have allowed someone like Jake to easily find me, (but that is a rant for another day).
To understand the significance of April 2, 2011, I have to go back 28 years, back to the summer of 1983.
I had just finished 10th grade, and that summer I took a trip to the hills of North India, as a part of a social work volunteer effort. I remember sleeping on the floor in this little unfurnished hut up in the hills, spending the days digging what would be the foundation of a village school. We had no electricity, no TV, the our toilet was to go out in the woods.
We did have a tiny transistor radio and we used that to listen to the Prudential Cricket World Cup, taking place in far away England. The West Indies were favored to win, the English were pretty good, and Australia and New Zeland weren’t too bad either. But India was no where in the picture, and no one really expected anything from our team. Our record, before this date had been dismal at best. But amazingly enough, India, led by Kapil Dev, this young Jat from Harayana, somehow made it to the semi-finals where we were facing England. There was little hope that we would go any further. The fact that we had made it that far was victory enough!
I remember, one late night, in this little room, with a bunch of kids my age, from different schools from around North India, crowded around the little radio, listening to the commentary of this semi-final game being played half-way across the globe. I don’t remember many of the details but two things do stand out. I remember hearing the commentator describing this young Indian batsman, Sandeep Patil, destroying the English bowling. And I remember, after the game was over, and India had won and made it to the finals, all of us, 16-17 year olds, standing up, in our pajamas, in this candle-lit room, spontaneously, beginning to sing the Indian National Anthem. Loudly, surely off key, but with gusto and pride.
A few days later I was back home in Delhi, watching the finals on our black-and-white TV. I remember West Indies destroying the Indian batting and then just as they started batting, the TV transmission died. (This was actually quite common back then.) I ran back to my radio, to keep up with the game, while keeping an eye on the TV, just in case the game came back on. I missed seeing the great catch by Kapil Dev that got rid of Viv Richards (who single handedly could decimate any opposing team). And then the West Indies wickets started to fall, and the TV came back, and I watched, what was the most amazing sight, the mighty West Indies collapse, and, wonder of wonders, India winning the world cup!
That was a defining moment for my generation and I remember it as clearly as it was yesterday. I doubt you can meet any Indian of around my age for whom this is not an unforgettable memory!
India, as a nation, had been going through a tough time. The Indira Gandhi government’s usurpation of power in 1975 (with the declaration of Emergency) was not too far from our memories. The government that had come after that had been woefully underwhelming, not even lasting a full term. Punjab was in flames, due to an insurgency that would (a few years later) consume Indira Gandhi herself. In the middle of all this was the world cup! It pulled us all, across India, together in ways that cannot be described. This victory was a turning point for all of us, a way of saying that our time had come. After this, there was little that we could no do!
Well a lot has changed in India since then. But India has never repeated that feat. India had never won another world cup.
Till today.
It took 28 years, but after a great game against Sri Lanka, in the 2011 world cup finals, India has done it again. Emphatically, and with grace India has won the world cup. Along the way India knocked out Australia (the winner of the past three competitions) and Pakistan (arguably as big a game as the final). As Joe Biden said, in a slightly different context, this is ****ing huge!
… aimed at enabling all pre-service teachers at early, middle and senior levels to become proficient in the use of ICT in education. It will focus on the first phase of the Australian Curriculum subjects – English, Mathematics, Science and History – and will be completed in June 2012. [Emphasis mine.]
The project seeks to target “systematic change in the Information and Communication Technology in Education (ICTE) proficiency of graduate teachers across Australia.” The project is led by a slew of key organizations, including:
Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC), and includes the Australian Council of Deans of Education (ACDE), the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), Education Services Australia (ESA), the Australian Council for Computers in Education (ACCE), and the 39 Australian higher education institutions with pre-service teacher education programs as partners. [Emphasis mine.]
As can be clear this is a huge undertaking seeking to transform teacher training for the entire country. You can find out more about the project by going to their website http://www.altc.edu.au/ttf/
What is interesting is that the TPACK framework underpins much of the work in the project (a link right there on the front page)! How cool and amazing is that.
This year at the SITE conference in Nashville, I was often blown away by the fact that work done my Matt Koehler and myself, (on the TPACK framework) sitting on the 5th floor of Erickson Hall in East Lansing is being utilized by researchers across the US and beyond. For instance, our symposium included presentations on TPACK being applied in Ghana and Kuwait! That is indeed a great feeling.
But this TTF project is a different scale altogether. To have our ideas play an important role in the restructuring of an entire nation’s (actually an entire continent’s, since Australia is both a country and a continent) teacher preparation program… is something else altogether.
I had posted earlier about the paper presentations I was involved with during the recently concluded SITE conference at Nashville. Matt Koehler and I were co-Program Chairs for the conference, and sadly Matt was sick and had to miss the trip. In the photo below the space between Gary Marks and myself, is where Matt would stand, if he had been there. (And of course, Gary would be making rabbit years over his head!)
As program chair I had the usual responsibilities, shake hands with everybody, smile a lot, make announcements, introduce speakers and so on. I tried to make these tasks (particularly the announcements) interesting and fun. Below are some examples of some of some of the things we did.
The first is a presentation in which I introduced our first keynote speaker: Yong Zhao. Yong and I go back a long time (almost 17 years!) so I had lots of stories to share, including one of my son when he was three years old! [See the slides here, PDF].
A few days later, I was asked to announce the poster award winners, I had some fun with that as well, particularly in creating, what I called, a “sting” video, revealing nefarious activities that occurred every SITE conference. Of course this was all good clean fun… You can find the video embedded below and the slides here PDF.
I also took some pictures during SITE. You can find them here
Finally you can see a music-video I created for the closing day reception as well as the final set of slides (once again in PDF format)
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.
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.
I just came across this sign on a wall in Bhubaneswar. Check it out, nothing less than “Tension free shiting!” All you have to do is dial a number!
Here is the sign cropped close
Here is the complete sign.
It is part of an advertisement for a packing and moving company. The painter droped the “f” in the word “shift!” I love the fact that this service is available through dialing a single phone number, from anywhere in the country and you can use any mode that you like to dial it in!
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.
Just before the Thanksgiving break, the College of Education and Michigan State University had the opportunity to host Dilleep Ranjekar and Anurag Behar, Co-CEO’s of the Azim Premji Foundation. The Azim Premji Foundation is a not-for-profit organization with a vision to “significantly contribute to achieve quality universal education that facilitates a just, equitable and humane society.” Operational since 2001, the APF employs over 200 professionals and 1000 paid volunteers in realizing this vision for elementary education in India. APF is currently engaged with over 2.5 million children, in 20,000 schools in partnership with 13 Indian States. The work of the foundation has been characterized by a strong emphasis on systemic reform of Indian education at all levels.
Anurag Behar
Dileep Ranjekar
I met Dileep (and other members of the foundation) a couple of years ago, when I was in Bangalore for a conference (see here). Ever since then, I have been working on developing a partnership between MSU and the foundation. There have been visits by people from the foundation to East Lansing, as well as visits by us to the foundation offices in Bangalore. The recent visit by Ranjekar and Behar coincides with an important new initiative started by the foundation.
As a critical component of the Foundation’s strategy, Azim Premji University has emerged as an institution for learning and research in education and relevant development domains. Its focus is to develop education capacity and foster the development of professionals who are committed to social change. Working closely with the Foundation’s other education and development programs, the University seeks to significantly strengthen the connection between theory and practice. Key foci include: (a) Preparing a large number of committed education and development professionals who can significantly contribute to meeting the needs of the country; and (b) Building new knowledge in the areas of education and development through establishing a very strong link between theory and practice.
Around 2 weeks ago I posted a note about a “pentagon” I saw in some boiling lentils in my kitchen. There have been some interesting responses to this… but before I get to that, here is the original image, if you missed the original posting:
Interestingly enough, a few readers questioned the very presence of the pentagon! They saw paws and hands and soccer balls … rather than a simple geometric shape. My first response was, “you must be kidding me, how can you NOT see a pentagon?” But as I thought about it a bit more, I began to “see” their point of view. I think, now, that I was too quick to latch onto the “pentagon” rather than consider other shapes. Whether this is a cultural matter (as some people suggested) or an individual quirk (as some others did), I am not sure.
That said, the fact that some kind of a 5-sided, pointed figure was visible was not in doubt. Whether a pentagon was the best way to label it maybe a fair question to ask. The “fiveness” of it, however, is not really under question here.
So… what caused this “five-based” shape? To cut a long story short, those of you who predicted this pattern had something to do with the heat source below were right, pretty much. I must add though that the lentils had NOT been stirred, and that this pattern emerged because they had not been stirred. Anyway, here is a photo of the heat source. I tried to take this picture from approximately the same location as the first one…
The first thing you notice are the five prongs that hold the pot up. And these five prongs align quite perfectly with the lines of bubbles that come inwards from the other edge of the vessel. The five prongs that hold the pot up prevent direct heat from hitting the base of the vessel and I suppose lead to less “boiling” activity in these areas, making them ideas spots for the bubbles to collect.
As to why we get the lines between these prongs (what I called the pentagon) is still not clear to me. My suspicion is that the convection currents that move through the water move the bubbles as they form to points where there is less “bubbling.” That explains the lines coming from the side towards the center – but does not fully, at least to my mind, explain the lines that join these prongs together – the pentagon that I first noticed.
Some more experimentation may be in order… I will keep you posted as and when opportunity arises for me to study this further
There are interesting patterns all around us. Here is one I found the other day. We were boiling lentils in a shallow bowl… and then, out of nowhere emerged an almost perfect pentagon!
The almost perfect pentagon that showed up on the surface
of the boiling lentils!
How cool is that. And does it mean something that five is a magical number (see this, this and this). As this page on numerology says
Five is the symbol of human microcosm. The number of the human being. Human forms—the pentagon when arms and legs are out stretched. The pentagon is endless —sharing the symbolism of perfection and power of the circle. Five is a circular number as it produces itself in its last digit when raised to its own power. The pentacle, like the circle symbolizes whole, the quincunx being the number of its center and the meeting point of heaven, earth, and the four cardinal points plus the center point.
Five is also representative of the Godhead – Central Creator of the four fours plus itself equalling five. Five is the marriage of the hieros gamos as combination of feminine and the masculine. Feminine being even, as 2, in frequency and masculine being odd as 3 in frequency = 5.
The number five symbolizes meditation; religion; versatility. It represents the five senses (taste, touch, smell, sight, hearing) everywhere except in the East. In the East there are six—the extra being Mind. We find meanings to five in the five petaled flower, five pointed leaves–especially the ROSE. The Rose has much symbolism, but also the lily, vine, all of which represent the microcosm.
The five pointed star depicts individuality and spiritual aspiration, and education when it points upward. The five pointed star pointing downward represents witchcraft, and it is used in black magic. Noted: There is a very broad difference between witchcraft and black magic.
The number five formed the first counting process from which all else came.
Hmm… so what does this magical appearance of the pentagon mean?
If we believe that every pattern has some underlying explanation, can there be a more mundane explanation? I have a possible hypothesis of what lies behind this phenomena… but what do you think? Where did this pattern come from?
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.
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!
The triplet ambigrams keep flying in. This new one came in an email from Chunlei Zhang, a faculty member at East China Normal University, having received his Ph.D. in Curriculum & Teaching from Beijing Normal University. He was inspired after reading my previous blog post (here and here) to make his own design. And being a serious educator he focused on three words that all instructional designers need to keep in mind – Content, Students and Objectives. Which naturally meant that his triplet ambigram was devoted to C, S & O! Check it out below…
A few weeks ago I had shared a few triplet-ambigrams I had designed. For the uninitiated a triplet ambigram is a 3-d shape that cast different, and interesting, shadows depending on where you shine light on it. For instance here’s a triplet ambigram that casts three different shadows that read A, B & C!
Yesterday I received an email from Alex Ruthman, a self-proclaimed regular reader of this blog who had been inspired to create his own triplet ambigrams. Alex is a music educator and researcher at UMass Lowell with an interest in creativity, music technology, web 2.0 and learner agency (see his home page here). Now, Alex has taken the design of such triplets to their next logical level. He does not just prototype them on paper, he designs them in Google Sketchup and then 3D prints them in plastic! Here is a photo he sent to me…
As you can see this shape casts the shadows of L, P & C (depending on where light shines on it). What is more, Alex does not just do this for fun. He has actually found an use for it in his teaching. As he said in his email:
I use these with my music education methods and research courses illustrating multiple perspectives and three modes of engaging with music: listening, performing and creating.
A large part of my creativity course, CEP818, (
