Punya Mishra’s Web

I came across this sign when I was in India recently and I just HAD to take a picture of it.

Click on the picture for a larger version

Of course, much of the effect comes from the inadvertent yet appropriate peeling of the paint from the letter “R.” But fun nonetheless.

I am in Chicago to give the Keynote address at the 2009 DePaul University Faculty Teaching and Learning Conference. The conference theme this year is Engaging Minds: Pedagogy and Personalism. I was invited by Sharon Guan (she was part of the AACTE Innovation & Technology Committee that edited the TPACK handbook). The title of my talk is Blurring the Boundaries, The Personal and the Professional in a Webbed World. Here is a brief description of what I will be talking about

Dr. Punya Mishra of Michigan State University asks DePaul faculty to consider the role of the professor’s identity (or persona) in course design. What are the challenges, benefits –and limits — of bringing personal experiences, values and interests into one’s teaching? We want our students to see us as “being knowledgeable yet accessible, wise but funny, cerebral but warm, benevolent and yet firm.” How can we do this in an age where we are increasingly communicating via electronic media that alter, extend and/or challenge the teacher’s identity?

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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This past August I was in India for a Symposium on Education Technology in Schools: Converging for Innovation & Creativity. The meeting was organized by the Quest Alliance, USAID and International Youth Foundation and was “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.” I blogged about this quite a bit, details here and here, here, and here.

I just received a beautifully designed Summary Report and a link to an Youtube video that I am including below: Read the rest of this entry »

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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I am at Ashland, Virginia for EdTech 2009 to be held on the campus of Randolph-Macon College. You can find the complete schedule here.

EdTech2009 is an annual two-day conference (that has been going on for over 20 years now) hosted by the Educational Services staff of Community Idea Stations (a local consortium of public radio and TV stations). The conference is attended by teachers, principals, library media specialists and administrators.

I had dinner last night with two educational technologists, Dr. Manorama Talaiver and her son Joseph Talaiver at Michelle’s at Hanover Tavern (a historical landmark). Dr. Talaiver is a faculty member at Longwood College. You can find out more about all the various things / projects she is involved in by following these links: Longwood University; Institute for Teaching through Technology & Innovative Practices; Southside Virginia Regional Technology Consortium; & Digispired: Exploring Game Design.

Joe is a teaching and learning consultant with Promethean.

I will be speaking about technology & creativity there today. Here is a copy of my presentation slides (as a pdf document).

I just completed a presentation at the symposium organized by the Department of Curriculum Design & Educational Innovation, University of Twente. Later this afternoon I will be conducting a workshop on creativity and the TPACK framework. The slides for both the presentation and the workshop are now available here (as pdf documents).

Presentation: Educational Technology & Teacher Education, the TPACK framework
Workshop: The art of teaching with ICT, Playing the TPACK game

Just thought I would share an example of interesting clock I saw during my stay here at Twente, made almost entirely of cardboard!

front view
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I am off to the Netherlands, specifically to Twente University to talk and discuss TPACK and other interesting stuff.

I have been invited by Dr. Joke Voogt, Associate Professor at the Department of Curriculum Design and Educational Innovation from the Faculty of Behavioural Sciences at the University of Twente.

I will be participating in a symposium for master’s students with the goal of giving them a broad overview of the possible areas of research in Educational Technology and following that with more focused discussions on particular research interests. I will be part of an international panel of academics, including Dr. Tom Reeves, Dr. Martin Valcke (pedagogies for flexible learning) & Dr. Jacquey Barber (curriculum, teacher and school development).

This should be fun and I hope to update my blog reasonably regularly while I am traveling.

Amita Chudgar, friend and colleague, just sent me this really nice article in today’s NYTimes, titled “India Calling” about the second generation of Indian Americans who are now going back to India. These are kids born and brought up in the US, whose parents had migrated from India 30 or 40 years ago. As you can imagine this raises interesting conundrums, particularly for the parents (something I had noted, peripherally here). Among other things this article speaks of “brain circulation”, as opposed to brain drain, and how this is creating a new breed of people. As the article says,

If there is a creative class, in Richard Florida’s phrase, there is also emerging what might be called a fusion class: people positioned to mediate among the multiple societies that claim them.

I am trying to live blog the conference: Symposium on Education Technology in Schools: Converging for Innovation & Creativity [Full agenda here]. Let us see how far I can keep this up.
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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.”

Read the rest of this entry »

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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The Indian Premier League, Twenty20 cricket championship was a great success. I had a chance to watch a few games (including the finals and semi-finals) when I was in india and it was a blast. This posting however is about an extremely creative commercial for the IPL tournament. Read the rest of this entry »

A funny (and yet somewhat sad) story … Read the rest of this entry »

I have been at Delhi for the most part since coming to India, meeting people, developing project ideas, catching up…
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I have continued adding photographs from the trip to my Flickr Site… I had posted about this earlier but I guess it is time for another reminder. There are now 380 photographs on the “Travels in Asia 2008″ Flickr-set (and more coming soon).
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Yesterday I met with Sanjaya Mishra, a scholar and researcher in the area of distance education. Sanjaya and I first met at the Vidyakash conference a bunch of years ago and we clicked almost immediately. I always enjoy meeting up with him when I am in Delhi, though it has been a couple of years since we last talked face to face.
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During my travel through Taiwan and Hong Kong, I usually opened my presentations with some bilingual ambigrams – words that can be read in Chinese AND English. Read the rest of this entry »

A short and sweet trip to Hong Kong, one full day, two nights, fly in fly out. Read the rest of this entry »

I woke up this morning, feeling maybe for the first time in this entire trip, tired and a little homesick. I ascribe the first to the rather hectic schedule I have had the past 10 days so, continually on the move, presentation after presentation, meeting after meeting, never in a place for more than a day. The homesickness I ascribe to hanging out with Hsueh-Hua, Han-Chin, and (the one most to blame) their 8 year old son Matthew. I guess I was suddenly reminded, in a very forceful way, of the three people back home in Okemos, whom I haven’t seen or talked to in a while Read the rest of this entry »

National Sun Yat Sen Unversity has one of the most gorgeous campuses you can imagine. Nestled between hills, with wonderful views of the ocean, with little twisty roads that connect departments and buildings, just beautiful. My hotel room had a magnificient view of the ocean. Read the rest of this entry »

I had been looking forward to the high speed rail journey though I had some concerns about navigating through the train station since most of the signs were in Chinese and Waiway (the graduate student who had come to pick me up from the airport) could not come with me beyond the ticket-check. However I need not have worried. There are signs everywhere, and if something didn’t make sense, people are always willing to help. Read the rest of this entry »

So my stay in Malaysia comes to an end. I haven’t had either had time or internet access to be able to update the blog the last few days. So briefly here goes… Read the rest of this entry »

I love Malaysia. I love its greenery, its up and down hilly landscape, the colors and designs of the houses, and yes the food. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been taking photographs as I travel around Asia (what I have previously described as my multi-national TPACK tour) and uploading them onto Flickr as and when I can. Read the rest of this entry »

I am currently in Kuala Lumpur, arrived here last night, after spending a night at Delhi. Read the rest of this entry »