Punya Mishra’s Web whatnmnmn

I arrived at Bangalore (now known as Bangaluru) this afternoon. Bangaluru is known as India’s Silicon valley and this my first time here. I am here for a conference (as described here).

Incidentally, Bangalore is also on its way to becoming a word in the English language. Read the rest of this entry »

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

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A recent story in the NYTimes about Peter Gabriel (An Old Rocker Gets Digital) brought back memories of Peter Gabriel’s album covers. It tells you a lot about me that I know album covers better than I know his music!
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In response to my previous posting titled How artists work, Leigh Wolf pointed out a book (Curious Minds: How a child becomes a scientist). I had not heard of this book before and a quick google search led me to this page. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been playing with an iTouch for the past few days and have have been quite impressed. What bothered me somewhat though was that my website (something I have spent hours designing) didn’t morph itself as gracefully as I would have liked into this new interface. But for every technological problem, there exists a technological solution (and vice versa)…
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Imagine you are standing in front of a bathroom mirror; how big do you think the image of your face is on the surface? And what would happen to the size of that image if you were to step steadily backward, away from the glass?

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An evocative image from today’s NYTimes about our improved understanding of the beautiful phenomena known as the northern lights. You can read the story here, but I would like to quote from the end of the article:
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Over the past few weeks I have noticed that some webpages I visit have banner ads that are targeted to me quite specifically - in particular to my Indian origin. Read the rest of this entry »

Just found out about this rather nifty tool that looks at your browser history and estimates your gender. My personal results were as follows:
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Every now and then it happens. The state or the system encounters an individual who, bafflingly, maddeningly, absurdly, cannot be broken — Christopher Hitchens

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is no more. He was not an easy author to read - and the last time I read him was back in high school (or maybe college). But I remember them still. Read the rest of this entry »

After the success of Stuff white people like, can Stuff Indians like be far behind. Check it out… it has the occasional nugget that nails Indians and their behavior.

Patrick Dickson just forwarded me an essay from the Chronicle of Higher Education, titled The Sensuous Classroom: Focusing on the Embodiment of Learning [Subscription required]. In this article Suzanne Kelly, the author, bemoans the absence of the physical body from online classrooms. I beg to differ… Read the rest of this entry »

Nice article in the NYTimes (Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?) about today’s generation and how much of their reading happens online (as opposed to reading books). I have seen a change in my reading over time as well. Read the rest of this entry »

In a previous posting I raised the question about when does a piece of technology become an educational technology?

One of the coolest pieces of technology today is the iPhone. Can it function as an educational technology?
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People have often argued that digital technologies change the role of teachers from (as it is commonly described) a “sage on the stage” to a “guide on the side.” Personally, I have my doubts about this, complicated somewhat by my recent experiences with GPS technologies.
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I have been catching up on my reading of Slate and came across this gem of an article by Judith Shulevitz titled, The care and feeding of fiction. Shulevitz has written a quasi-review of James Wood’s new book How fiction works and makes we want to read the book itself. Of the many interesting ideas in the article is this wonderful quote that I just had to share:

There is only one recipe—to care a great deal for the cookery – Henry James

A statement that ought to apply to all that we do…

As an aside, it is clear from this essay by Woods that he has a “take no prisoners” style of writing. His take down of most magical realistic writing (which is calls hysterical realism), including Rushdie, Pynchon, DeLillo and Foster Wallace is a must read. This just makes me more confident that the book will be a wonderfully, idiosyncratic, engaging and intelligent read.

Martin Seligman is one of the most eminent psychologists alive today. As his wikipedia page says, “He is well known for his work on the idea of “learned helplessness”, and more recently, for his contributions to leadership in the field of Positive Psychology.” He has served as the president of the American Psychological Association (the most significant psychological association in the country) and has written numerous bestsellers in the area of positive psychology (a field he helped establish).

I was therefore saddened to learn that his name was mentioned in Jane Mayer’s recent book “The dark side: The inside story of how the war on terror turned into a war on American ideals.” as being involved with the administration’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques [Full disclosure: I have not read Mayer’s book, and base this posting on reviews and other web based resources.] Read the rest of this entry »

I just created a personalDNA map for myself. Turns out I am a Benevolent Inventor… beats being a benevolent dictator I say! However, this posting is concerned not with what the survey found out about me but rather about what I learned about the survey. Read the rest of this entry »

My 12 year old son, Soham, has never been into music. An MP3 player I bought for him languishes somewhere in his room. So you can imagine my surprise when, a few months ago, he indicated an interest in a song, Louis Armstrong’s What a wonderful world. So this posting is for him, two very beautiful, yet very different renditions/representations of the same song, brought to you, thanks to YouTube.
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A few months ago I wrote about Professor R. K. Joshi (here and here). He was, as I said in the piece, maybe the single greatest influence on my role as a teacher. I had mentioned that R.K. loved absurdity and play. I was reminded of this when I read about this group called Improv Everywhere. Check out their website and the kinds of crazy things they get into. Very cool.

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