Punya Mishra’s Web whatnmnmn

A few years ago I was asked to talk to some major donors of the College as a part of the kick-off of the MSU Capital Campaign. The text below is what I had written out prior to giving the talk. It is not an exact transcript of what I actually said, since I occasionally digressed from the written text in front of me. I had been asked to speak about the value of research.
Read the rest of this entry »

Wong, D., Mishra, P., Koehler, M.J., & Adams, 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. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Here are some links that came up during our discussion today regarding web-based software for education. Read the rest of this entry »

Just heard this of stealth assessment idea (from Michael Spector at NTLS) that struck a chord. More here, [word document].

A NYTimes story about Spore, the new game / toy designed by Will Wright (Playing God, the Home Game) speaks about its connection to evolution. As the article says,

Mr. Wright and his publishers at Electronic Arts deserve all the credit they have received from some scientists merely for making a game about evolution (though it will be fascinating to see how the game fares among people who do not believe evolution is real).

This raises the interesting question as to whether this game can be used to actually teach evolutionary theory.

However, I am not sure just how much the game truly represents evolution as biologists think about it. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a recurring debate in the ed-tech community about if media make a difference. One argument is that media is akin to a conveyance system bringing in supplies (content). At some level it doesn’t matter if the content is brought by a truck or a train, a bullock cart or a pipe. The content remains the same. See this blog posting for an overview of this debate.
Read the rest of this entry »

Does it matter whether a brownie is served on a paper plate or on china? Is the Patagonian Toothfish less tasty than the Chilean Bass? In an earlier posting (perception of taste) I had cited research showing that wine with an expensive price tag was judged to be better than the same wine with a less expensive tag!
Read the rest of this entry »

A few years ago, as a part of our PT3 project Matt Koehler, Ken Dirkin and I video taped a series of teacher interviews around authentic problem solving in teaching using technology. The teachers were winners of the TAPS (Technology in Authentic Problem Solving) award, an award given by MACUL and MSU. Over the past few months Ken has been working on creating a website to make these videos more accessible.
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.
Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

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?

Read the rest of this entry »

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:
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?
Read the rest of this entry »

Check out Story of Stuff or watch the movie…
Read the rest of this entry »

In my summer classes I have the participants complete a video assignment on understanding. This year as always my students worked in groups over a week-and-a-half to select their topics, develop interview protocols, video tape people as they answered their questions, and then edit the footage into a tight 4-5 minute documentary. Here are the projects they created (I am still waiting on one): Read the rest of this entry »

When does the brain make up YOUR mind? Does this question make any sense?

Anyway, this was prompted by an article that showed that “Researchers using brain scanners could predict people’s decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them.” Hmmm… Read the rest of this entry »

All of us have walked through a sun-dappled forest. However, few of us have noticed that underneath are feet are thousands of little perfect circles. This is often difficult to see because these little perfect circles often overlap into irregular globs of sunlight. However, if you find a single piece of sunlight within the shadows of the leaves above - you will a perfect circle of sunlight. And when I say a perfect circle, I mean exactly that, perfect! Where do these perfect little circles come from? Read the rest of this entry »

There is an article in yesterday’s Education Week (a part of their Technology Counts series) titled “Learning to Teach with Technology.” Read the rest of this entry »

Two interesting articles about religions and magical thinking. The first from the Economist is about how scientists are attempting to explain religion in evolutionary terms. As the article says, “religion cries out for a biological explanation,” though previous attempts have not been very successful. However, it looks like that may be changing Read the rest of this entry »