Punya Mishra's Web

Over the past few months I have been working with my kids on creating short thematic videos. The themes we chose were the three words, Explore, Create & Share. Though the videos for Explore and Create got made rather quickly, the video for Share appeared to stump us.

Much to my relief, after weeks of discussion and thinking, we finally have a video for the word share. I am including all three videos here, in sequence, so that you can see just how these three videos work together. All three videos have original music composed by my cousin, Sonny Mishra.

7 tools… one big job: Explore

Emergence: Create

… and finally,
A helping hand: Share

(Other videos created by us can be seen here.)

Harris, J.,  Mishra, P. & Koehler, M. J. (2009). Teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Learning Activity Types: Curriculum-based Technology Integration Reframed. Journal of Research on Technology in Education.

In this paper we critically analyze extant approaches to technology integration in teaching, arguing that many current methods are technocentric, often omitting sufficient consideration of the dynamic and complex relationships among content, technology, pedagogy, and context. We recommend using the technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge (TPACK) framework as a way to think about effective technology integration, recognizing technology, pedagogy, content and context as interdependent aspects of teachers’ knowledge necessary to teach content-based curricula effectively with educational technologies. We offer TPACK-based “activity types,” rooted in previous research about content-specific activity structures, as an alternative to existing professional development approaches and explain how this new way of thinking may authentically and successfully assist teachers’ and teacher educators’ technology integration efforts.

Matt Koehler and I just published an article in Learning & Leading with Technology, the membership magazine of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).

The complete citation is as follows:
Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2009, May). Too Cool for School? No Way! Learning & Leading with Technology, (36)7. 14-18. [PDF download].

This article includes a few examples of work done by my students as a part of a doctoral seminar. I had given them an assignment titled, How can a technology become an educational technology? and the work of three of them made it to the paper. I had written previously about Noah’s idea for using microblogging in the classroom (see here, here & most recently here). I haven’t blogged about the other two (though I have discussed them in presentations I have made) so it is good to have them represented here. Paul’s idea was to use specialized search engines (particularly visual search engines) to help students understand the idea of inter-textuality (the idea that texts often refer to each other in complex and intricate ways to create webs of meaning). Erik Byker, on the other hand, looked at how freely available DJ software can be used to teach mathematical concepts such as ratios, fractions, and percentages. Cool stuff!

I did not go to AERA this year – choosing instead to go to Chicago to Keynote the Engaging Minds: Pedagogy and Personalism, the 2009 DePaul Faculty Teaching and Learning Conference. We did have a paper to be presented there (and I am sure our Iowa State friends must have done a splendid job).

As it turns out there were quite a few presentations/sessions at AERA devoted to TPACK. For the record I am including their titles and abstracts here below: Read the rest of this entry »

The CITE Journal had a recent special issue devoted to TPACK. You can access the special issue (edited by Judi Harris and Matt Koehler) here or individual articles below.
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Just found out from Kathryn Dirkin that a prominent textbook of Educational Technology now features the TPACK framework. The book is titled “Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching” [link to Amazon.com] and is authored by Margaret D. Roblyer and Aaron H Doering. This is not an endorsement of the book (which I haven’t yet seen) though I know that Margaret has been a bestselling author and active in educational technology for many years (this is the fifth edition of the book) and I do know Aaron, having met him most recently at the SITE conference.
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Just found out that

Shin, T., Koehler, M.J., Mishra, P. Schmidt, D., Baran, E., & Thompson, A.,(2009, March). Changing technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) through course experiences. Paper presented at the 2009 International Conference of the Society for the Information and Technology & Teacher Education. March 2-6, Charleston, South Carolina.[Paper | Presentation]

won the SITE 09 Outstanding Paper award. Cool!

As the TPACK framework has developed and received greater research and scholarly attention there has been an increasing demand for a survey instrument that can help us measure TPACK. There are now two such measures available.
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I am off to Charleston, SC for the SITE 2009 conference. . I can’t believe it has been a year since Matt Koehler and I presented our Keynote. I am sending this note sitting in the Michigan Flyer bus (making good use of their free wi-fi) and am looking forward to a good conference.

I am involved with four different papers at this conference (details below) well as a few other meetings. I will try keep the blog up to date with the happenings. For now here are the titles and abstracts of the four paper accepted for presentation.
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Welcome to the second edition of the TPACK Newsletter. If you are not sure what TPACK is, please feel free to surf over to www.tpack.org to find out more.

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Mishra & Yadav (2006) was a paper based around my dissertation research. It took a while to get published and I am including it here for the record. My dissertation (Mishra, 1998) was maybe the first place where I made a specific mention of the triad of constructs: Technology, Pedagogy & Content that later developed into the TPACK framework. I must add that I used the word “learning theory” or “theory” in place of “pedagogy” in my dissertation. By the time this paper came out our key TPACK paper (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) was already in press – so this paper refers to our further crystallized thinking about these issues.

Mishra, P., & Yadav, A. (2006). Using hypermedia for learning complex concepts in chemistry: A qualitative study on the relationship between prior knowledge, beliefs and motivation. Education and Information Technologies. 11(1), 33-69. [Click link to download PDF.]

Abstract and an ambigram follow: Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of TPACK related updates.

First, the outdated tpck.org has been replaced by the more up-to-date and more appropriate TPACK.org. [The tpck.org site hasn't really gone away, but we plan to phase it out over time].
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The Innovation & Technology Committee of the AACTE organized a symposium titled: Digital-Age Learners in a Socially Networked World at the Annual meeting at Chicago.

See photos from AACTE09 @ Chicago (hosted on Flickr)

I just spent a couple of days in Chicago at the Annual meeting of the American Association for the Colleges of Teacher Education.

On Friday evening was meeting of the Innovation and Technology Committee the highlight of which was a gift of appreciation that we gave Joel Colbert for his service to the Committee. It was under his stewardship (over five years) that this committee achieved a great deal: the handbook, two major forums at AACTE conferences, and other highly visible and high-impact work.

Here is Joel with the “gift”

Since you can’t see the details of what was on it, here is a jpg of what was etched on the glass:
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The Journal of Teacher Education just came out with a special theme issue devoted to innovative uses of technology for teacher learning. The editorial for the special issue frames the issues strongly in terms of the TPACK framework, building on the work Matt Koehler and I presented in TCRecord (back in 2006), as well as the chapters in the TPACK Handbook (and our introductory chapter). The complete reference is as follows:

Borko, H., Whitcomb, J., & Liston, D. (2009). Wicked Problems and Other Thoughts on Issues of Technology and Teacher Learning. Journal of Teacher Education. 60(1), 3-7. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Koehler and I just submitted an article for Learning & Leading with Technology, the flagship journal published by ISTE. The journal features practical ideas for using today’s technology tools to improve teaching and learning. Our work on TPACK was recently featured in an article there (here’s a link). Our current article, our first for the magazine is titled Creative uses of cool tools for teaching, Considering the TPACK framework. Since this is in draft form right now, I am not posting a link here. However, here are some key excerpts, just to whet your appetite!

This is the age of cool tools. Facebook, the iPhone, Flickr, blogs, cloud computing, Smart Boards, YouTube, Google Earth, and GPS devices are just some of the most recent examples. New technologies bombard us from all directions. Often our reaction when we see a new toy is one of surprise and pleasure. These toys are cool.

As individuals we see a new technology and can appreciate its coolness, but as educators we also wonder how these tools can be used for teaching. We understand that just because a technology is innovative and cool does not necessarily make it an educational technology. We hear common refrains – “technology should not drive pedagogy” or “technology is just a tool, a means to an end, not the end itself.” We also can, however, sense that these emerging technologies have the potential to fundamentally change we think about teaching and learning and our role as educators. We wonder just how these cool tools, if used thoughtfully and creatively, can positively influence pedagogy.

…

Repurposing these cool tools for educational purposes, however, is not a trivial problem. In this article (and elsewhere) we have argued that for educators to repurpose tools and integrate them into their teaching, they require the creative application of a specific kind of knowledge that we call Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (or TPACK for short). In this article we introduce the TPACK framework and describe just how it can help teachers become more creative and intelligent in their use of technology.

Aroutis Foster and I recently published a chapter in the Handbook of research on effective electronic gaming in education (I had posted about it earlier here). The handbook seeks to provide a comprehensive coverage of the use of electronic games in multiple fields. Complete reference, abstract & link to pdf given below.
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I had posted earlier that a paper on gender and video games had been accepted for publication. Well, it is published now, full reference, abstract and link to PDF given below.
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Just for the record, Matt Koehler and I have a new piece in press. I should note that significant portions of this paper were condensed and updated from Mishra & Koehler (2007), with permission from AACE. Email me if you want a draft copy. The complete reference and abstract is given below:
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Judi Harris, Matt Koehler and I just submitted an article on Activity Types and TPACK. We had presented this at AERA last year and it took a while getting it ready to submit as a journal article. In this paper we combine the work that Judi (and her colleagues) have been doing in the area of activity structures and activity types (particularly in the area of social studies) with the TPACK framework.

I am including the abstract below, but since this piece is under review I am not providing a link to it. Drop me an email if this is something of interest and I could send you a draft copy. Read the rest of this entry »

The field of educational technology is littered by attempts to replace the teacher by creating some kind of a technological learning system that would make the teacher redundant. All such attempts have failed. This has, however, not prevented people from trying.

This is particularly true in India, where teacher recruitment, retention and most importantly quality are immense challenges. In such a context the idea that computers can replace teachers is quite attractive. For instance, the Azim Premji Foundation spent millions of rupees in developing curricular multimedia CDs that were distributed directly to students, sidestepping the teacher altogether. Their own research shows that this tactic did not work.

Now, for someone like me, who values what teachers bring to the table, this result may not be much of a surprise. It is interesting though to find that there really isn’t much research to support my position. Such research is difficult to do – and comparisons are hard to experimentally control and study. This is why I perked up when I saw an article in the latest edition of the journal Educational Technology Research & Development. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently received a note from a graduate student as an unnamed university. This student wrote to me after having assigned the TPACK handbook chapter (co-authored with Matt Koehler) to a bunch of pre-service teachers, and suggested that the chapter was hard to read, appearing to have been written for academics rather than undergraduate students. I wrote back, indicating no surprise at this finding, particularly since this chapter had been written for academics. I added that I would not be comfortable inflicting that chapter on my undergraduate (or even master’s level) students. In contrast I would use the keynote address that Matt and I had made for SITE 2008, which was far more accessible without undervaluing any of the substantive ideas were were interested in communicating.

It seemed to me that this student’s experience highlighted for me a more general phenomena – of seeing the world through one set of lenses and being oblivious to others – that I have seen very often and have thought about a great deal. For one reason or another, however, I had never really found an appropriate label for. But now I do…
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Matt Koehler and I have often talked about the wicked problems of design and teaching with technology (most specifically in our handbook chapter on TPACK). We take the idea of wicked problems from a classic paper written by Rittel and Weber back in 1973. As Wikipedia says, Rittel was “a pioneering theorist of design and planning, and late professor at the University of California, Berkeley.” Rittel’s writings are often hard to get hold of since he published in a range of journals across multiple domains. Professor Ellen Do at Georgia Tech has created a webpage with links and downloadable PDFs of many of Rittel’s works. Check it out here.

Mishra, P., & Girod, M. (2006/2007). Designing learning through learning to design. The High School Journal. 90(1). 44 – 51. Reprinted in K. M. Cauley, & G. Pannozzo, (Eds.), Annual Edition: Educational Psychology 07/08. McGraw-Hill: NY. Read the rest of this entry »

… or just narrow?

I just discovered Britannica blog, a pretty lively virtual space for intelligent discussion. How I had not come across it earlier is a mystery – but again that is the beauty of the web.

Anyway, there is an ongoing discussion there about how the web influences what we do. A provocative argument (based on data) being put forth by James Evans is regarding the influence of the availability of electronic resources on the research process.
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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 »

Teachers College Record chooses a couple of articles each week to offer freely to visitors to its website. These are featured in their email newsletter (TCRecord this week), and goes out to thousands of people. Imagine my surprise when I opened my newsletter a few minutes ago. Turns out that the article chosen this week is none other than the 2006 piece written by Matt Koehler and myself, Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Framework for Teacher Knowledge! That’s pretty cool.

A few months ago I had posted a note about Harvard faculty considering and passing a resolution to freely publishing all their scholarship online (see this and this). Now it turns out that faculty at the Stanford University, School of Education have gone the same route (see this note). Bravo.

But what’s going on back home, at MSU?
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A few years ago Sachin Kalbag, then at Digit, contacted me to write an article for a special for the magazine’s fourth anniversary issue. The topic at hand was Digital Convergence, what it is, and what does it mean for our future? Read the rest of this entry »

There have been many requests for the first chapter of the TPACK Handbook (recently published by AACTE & Routledge). Below is the summary and a link to the pdf version.
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