I have been working with my kids on a series of short videos around the themes of Explore, Create, Share. These three words were used in my video mashup of a commercial (see the commercial AND my mashup here). Original music for this series was created by my cousin,...
Hobnob with MSU faculty
Paul Morsink & Bakar Razali, two graduate students in our college have been doing this interesting variant of the 60 second lecture. They record short videos of individual faculty members talking about anything that interests them and through that allow viewers to...
New presentation tool
Todd Edwards at Miami University just told me about this new presentation tool called Prezi.... You have to see it to believe it. Just amazing. Check it out at http://prezi.com/
Tech as tool, medium & network
I just discovered (through the serendipitous connectibility of Google Alerts) about Teaching Thursdays a blog from the University of North Dakota. It is a collaborative venture between Anne Kelsh (Office of Instructional Development) and Bill Caraher (Department of...
Special CITE issue on TPACK
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. Bull, G., & Bell, L. (2009). TPACK: A framework for the CITE Journal. Contemporary Issues in...
TPACK & the moon OR why I love the web
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...
Following up on lunar distance
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...
The beauty of the web: Shape of the earth
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...
Using eclipses to see
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...
TPACK videos: A few new ones
I have come across some new TPACK related videos/podcasts (either on youtube or elsewhere) that I feel may be worth sharing. The first of them came as an email from Matt Townsley. He pointed me to these two videos by Janet Bowers of San Diego State University. In...
TPACK in a textbook!
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...
Brilliant stop motion
Just came across this on Nina Paley's blog... and it just blew me away! [youtube width="425" height="355"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HXUhShhmY[/youtube]
Creativity at Wake Forest
I presented yesterday at a conference a Wake Forest University titled: Creativity: Worlds in the Making. I was part of a panel that included Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein and Todd Siler. More details about the panel and links to my presentation can be found below....
Yet another periodic table…
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...
SITE08 Keynote YouTubed!
I just found out (via These Apples are Delicious blog, and more specifically this posting: Creative Teachers) that the keynote that Matt and I presented at SITE08 is now available on YouTube! Somebody went through the effort of breaking up the video into 5 parts and...
Representing DNA as code
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,...
The 60 second lecture
I received an email yesterday from the State News (our local university newspaper) about what I thought of the 60 second lecture—a trend sweeping through online courses. Some of my first thoughts about this are below. If you don't know what they are, check out this...
TPACK Survey(s), now available
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. We, here at Michigan State, in close...
TPACK Ambigram
I have been wanting to create a TPACK ambigram for a while now... what would be better than combining my two greatest loves - technology integration in teaching WITH ambigrams! Finally after some subtle prodding by Matt Koehler I have finally done so. This is a...
Optical illusions go live…
If you love optical illusions you have to see this... just absolutely brilliant. The moment she pulls out the driver's license is priceless. And of course the face / vase flip-flop at the end is cool too. See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor. This...
Visualizing periodic tables (What not to do)
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,...
Multiple representations of the periodic table and learning
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...
EduPunk: The logo
I had written about the EduPunk program and my natural affinity to it here. What I forgot to add in that posting was an EduPunk logo I had created. This logo was made using photos of letterforms from Flickr. There is a handy-dandy tool created by Erik Kastner called...
MSU Technology Showcase: The Usual Suspects
I have been invited by Patrick Dickson, Byron Brown and Jon Sticklen to offer a lowkeynote address (note emphasis on lowkey!) for MSU's Second Annual Faculty Technology Showcase (more details here). I have created a small presentation to go with my lowkeynote, slides...
The Allegory of the Cave
Plato's Allegory of the Cave (see Wikipedia entry) illustrates "our nature in its education and want of education." It is maybe one of the most famous allegories in literature and philosophy, a precursor to the kinds of mind-games (think brain in a vat) that...
A different language
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...
Social Networking & Education @ AACTE
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. As co-chair of the committee I had the privilege of introducing the session and the individual...
TE150 presentation in streaming video
Terri Gustafson has created streaming downloads of the presentation recently made by the TE150 (Reflections on Teaching, Reflections on Learning) Online team (see this for more context). The video can be seen in two parts: Part I: The presentation "Reflections on...
Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries
... Or Why I love the web. I stumbled upon a piece (Lotus Blossom) by Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries the other day... and it was like nothing else I had ever seen. At some superficial level it looked like kinetic typography, but both simpler and more complex at the...
Rate of change of technology
I just stumbled upon this image from a 1950 issue of Popular Mechanics. The tag line below the image says: Because everything in her home is waterproof, the housewife of 2000 can do her daily cleaning with a hose. Though it is easy to make fun of this image it can be...