Punya Mishra's Web

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!

One of the many things I have to do as a faculty member is review grant proposals. This is an important service to the field, but truth be told, given how busy I am I do see it as somewhat of a chore. I was recently reviewing some educational research proposals for a grant giving agency – and I was struck by something that led to this post. (I guess, it is less of a chore if it leads to a blog-post!).

I must say, without giving too much away, that these proposals were broadly related to education and not restricted to just the field of educational technology. That said there were two that were directly technology related, one having to do with virtual partners and the other with webbased learning. It is not surprising that these two would focus on technology directly.

What was surprising however was just how infused with technology all the other projects were. In each of these “non-tech” proposals various forms of technology were used for every aspect of the research from the kinds of information being collected, to how the information was collected; from how the informaiton was analyzed to how it would be reported and disseminated. For instance, there were studies on probing athletes cognition using fFMRI technologies, and another on collabrating across continents using webcams. There was one study that handed student-teachers Flip cameras to help them create digital stories, and subscriptions to surveymonkey or specialized statistical analysis packages!

What this shows clearly is just how fundamentally how we conduct research (in the field of education) has changed with these new digital technologies. And it has changed not in some flashy “pay attention to me, I’m so cool!” kind of a way but in a more insidious and sneaky manner (but no less revolutionary for that). These technologies have become transparent to the researchers – and are just seen as being part of what they do. Now I am sure this is not something unique to education. This is happening in each and every discipline from astronomy to zoology. What this means is that our disciplinary relationship to the world is now mediated through these new tools and devices.
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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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I recently blogged (here and here) about the experiment conducted by students in Italy that allowed them to use publicly available NASA audio recordings from the moon landings to determine the distance between the earth and the moon. I bit more online research led to me to the original paper published on arXiv. arXiv is described as an “e-print service in the fields of physics, mathematics, non-linear science, computer science, quantitative biology and statistics” and is hosted and supported by Cornell University. Reading the paper led me to a writing this posting, since i see this as one of the best examples of the TPACK framework in use that I have come across.

I provide the abstract and a link to the original paper (in pdf format) below and follow that with my thoughts.
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A followup to my previous posting about the Italian kids calculating the distance to the moon using recordings from the Apollo Space program.

As I read the story on the technology Review website, I came to the comments made by readers. One stuck out. This is what somebody had said:

Wow, they took the speed of light and multiplied by 2.62 then divided by 2. Interesting method of doing it, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist for sure.

By focusing on the surface aspect of the math this person misses the point of the story almost completely. Misses, it I may add by almost the distance from the Earth to the moon. Read the rest of this entry »

For one reason or another, I have three consecutive posts regarding the earth and sun and moon – i.e. the local area in the solar system. I had just completed my previous postings (on on seeing through eclipses and measuring the radius of the earth) when I came across this news story (h/t Geekpress): School kids measure distance to the Moon Read the rest of this entry »

While searching for information for my previous posting on using eclipses to see, I came across an interesting paper that provided yet another way of figuring out the shape of the Earth.

Lynch, D.K. (2005). Turbulent ship wakes: further evidence that the Earth is round. Applied Optics, 44(27). 5759 – 5762.

First some context, see this image below:

View aft (south): ship’s wake extending to southern horizon (20050802a11).
Photo credit: B. Cuthbertson
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Let me start with two questions: First, what is the shape of the Earth? And two, what shapes does the sun cast on the ground when filtered through the leaves of a tree? Of course we know the answer to the first question. The pictures from space show clearly this almost perfect circle or “pale blue dot” that we live on and in an age of Google Earth such questions seem moot. But it is still interesting to think about ways of figuring out the shape of the Earth, from right here on the surface.

In answering the second question, what most people don’t know is that the shape the sun casts on the ground are perfect circles too – though few of us have paid much attention to it. And the reason this happens is because the gaps between the leaves act as little pin-hole cameras casting little images of the sun on the ground below. Now you don’t have to take my word for it. But the question then becomes, how can we prove this pin-hole phenomena is actually happening. Well, one way is to change the shape of the sun. You may think this is kind of hard to do… but as it turns out this does happen (at least its perceived shape from the earth). The answer, as you may have guessed, has to do with eclipses.

Turns out that eclipses are a great way of perceiving things that may be difficult to see and can help us answer both these questions (both of which I have written about before – but for some reason I had never really put them together). Read the rest of this entry »

I have come across some new TPACK related videos/podcasts (either on youtube or elsewhere) that I feel may be worth sharing.
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I don’t know if anyone has been following the back and forth following my posting about the Periodic Table of Typefaces (see Yet another periodic table…). In brief, I was quite critical of the design of this table and made that point in no uncertain terms. Imagine my surprise at receiving a wonderful note from the Camdon Wilde (the designer of the table) which led to quick back and forth between us. It was a wonderfully pleasant conversation and I am very appreciative of Camdon’s grace.

I was telling my wife about this, reading through my posting, and the comments back and forth… and it struck me just how cool this entire episode was. To connect with another person, someone I have never met, building on mutual respect and openness, was beautiful in being unexpected. And it could not have happened without this wonderful technology called the Web! How very cool is that.

The ongoing saga of mis-representing the periodic table for any darned list of objects continues… Here is a new one sent in by my friend and colleague Patrick Dickson: A periodic table of Typefaces.

Now I won’t beat a dead horse here, (Nashworld has a great posting about this and I have written about it here) but tables of this kind just drive me up the wall.
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Matt Koehler and I rarely (if ever) explicitly mention the TPACK framework in our teaching. Of course the framework guides all that we do in class – but we have never really felt the need to throw another acronym (or series of acronyms such as TK, CK, TPK and so on) at our students. We attempt to embody the TPACK framework in all that we do as teachers but we do so implicitly.

I had blogged about this previously in another context (see Nerdview OR being stuck in our worldview).

That said, I know there are teacher preparation courses out there (in other universities) that explicitly follow or teach according to the TPACK framework. I know that the technology integration course at Iowa State (the one that was described in one of our TPACK survey papers, see the third citation/abstract on this page) is one. Recently (through the magic of Google Alert) I have come to know of two more. The first, about which I blogged about recently, is at Brigham Young University and is taught by Dr. Charles Graham. The other, is taught by Dr. Grace Ward at University of Maine at Farmington. You can find the course at BYU here and the one at UM, Farmington here. Interestingly, the course at University of Maine uses the TPACK handbook as a primary text (something I argue against in this post).

I would be interested in finding out about other courses that utilize the TPACK framework. If you know of any (or are involved in teaching one) let me know. Thanks in advance.

What does it mean to represent something? Sean Nash (of Nashworld) and I have been having some fun at the expense of periodic representations (my post and his response) and even children’s books. I had been wanting to write about this for the past few days but travel, work and illness came in the way. However, I stumbled upon a way of thinking about DNA that prompted (actually forced) me to write this post. Read the rest of this entry »

I had heard of Neil Gershenfeld’s work on the Bits to Atoms Project at MIT but thought of these Fabrication Labs as being too expensive ($500,000+) or esoteric for everyday or classroom use.

But one fine day I got an email from Glen Bull from Virginia informing me of cheaper alternatives. These are computer-controlled die cutting machine that shapes paper, cardboard, and vinyl can be purchased for the same price as an ink-jet printer – that is, for less than $500. The advent of personal fabrication systems makes it possible for schools to begin exploring educational implications of the digital fabrication revolution today.

Leigh Wolf has set up a Ning group called fablabs and we just finished a meeting at SITE about these technoloies. Visit the group to see what one can do with these technologies.

The challenge of course is figuring how this technology can become an educational technology!

Sean Nash (of Nashworld) sent me a link to A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods of Management. This is a very cool looking representation developed by Ralph Lengler & Martin Eppler at the Institute of Corporate Communication at the University of Lugano, Switzerland. It attempts to define and compile “existing visualization methods in order to develop a systematic overview based on the logic, look, and use of the periodic table of elements.” [Quote from a paper the PDF of which you can download here.]

This is a pretty cool piece of software and a great resource. The image above does not do it justice since it does not capture the interactivity in the table – the fact that rolling over the cells pops out more information about each visualization technique.

That said, I find this representation fundamentally flawed. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

I have always been interested in how we use words to capture intangibles. For instance wine connoisseurs have developed a specialized language (which sadly is quite opaque to me) to explain to each other characteristics of wine. So the words “fruity” and “dry” have specific gustatory connections.

I was reminded of this on hearing this NPR story (Andrew Bird: Words As Instruments) about singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bird. This is how he describes the goal of his latest album:

Bird says that his main focus while working on Noble Beast was to represent texture in his music.
“I think of like, when I was a kid, and I would get my Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass and throw myself down in a pile of mulch or something and go in there and pretend that I was microscopic,” Bird says. “I wanted to capture that kind of woody, mossy, decaying kind of sound.”

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Charles Darwin
12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882
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Here is a cool video about a “a mechanical, binary adding machine that uses marbles to flip the bits” – in other words a computer made of wood, that works at a pace that we can grasp! Marvelous. (HT: Collision Detection). Check out the video:

A fascinating series of illusions to reveal just how complicated a phenomenon perception is. I was particularly impressed by the “rubber hand” illusion.

And then, from Gizmodo, comes the Yoshimoto cube. Words are not enough to describe what this mind-bending object can do, you just have to watch the video.
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Interesting article in Scientific American about how flaws in our biology reveal our evolutionary history. Steven Gould talked about it in his famous essay on The Panda’s Thumb.

This is a wonderful argument for Darwinian evolution since it points not to perfection (which the deniers of evolution can point to as well as example of divine intervention) but rather to imperfection (which is somewhat more difficult to explain by non-evolutionists – why would an all-powerful deity make mistakes). The lesson here is that imperfections point to a contingent historical past. Tracing these imperfections allows us to make inferences about how things came to be. Think of the Qwerty keyboard, to take an example from technological evolution, an artifact from the days of early manual typewriters, that actually required a design that would slowdown people’s typing speed to prevent the keys from getting stuck.

Just came across another page devoted to the same issue, just with more examples.

I just read on CNN that Obama’s likely nominee for energy secretary is physicist and Nobel Laureate Dr. Steven Chu. What a contrast to the previous administration’s science policy. (Actually it is still the current administration!)

Has a novel prize winner ever served on the cabinet before? I wonder.

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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Who says scientists can’t have fun. I just discovered a series of videos on (where else) YouTube about scientists expressing their doctoral research through dance!!! What can be cooler than that? Check out one of the winners: The role of Vitamin D in beta-cell function
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A couple of weeks ago I made a presentation (with Neeraj Buch) to a group of engineering educators from India. This was a meeting organized by the College of Engineering and the Indo-US Collaboration for Engineering Education. Having made this presentation once I had a better sense of what I should be talking about – and that is reflected in the new set of slides. You can download a pdf version of my slides here: Improving Engineering Education: The Past and the Future.

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 »

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.
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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 »