I just received a gift in the mail. It was a box and in the box was One of those cool push pin toys... How cool is that! In the box was a short note that went: Hi Dr. Punya! It was a pleasure to meet you during the Quest Alliance Seminar in Bangalore. I really enjoyed...
Jugaad, India-genous creativity
Jugaad is a Hindi word which does not have a straight forward equivalent in English. I guess the closest phrase I would say would be "situational or indigenous creativity," the ability to make do creatively with the tools/resources one has at hand. On Jugadu.com I...
Teachers & technology, a quote
Just heard this in a talk by Sugata Mitra, titled Sugata Mitra: Can kids teach themselves?Any teacher who can be replaced by a computer .... should be! — Arthur C. Clarke See the entire video...
Capturing CAPTCHA or If it can be outsourced…
... it will. We have all see CAPTCHA's (aka Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). They are images with somewhat garbled text on them that websites used to tell humans from automated programs. The idea is to prevent prevent...
Orissa Folklore
Just got an email from a fellow Mishra (no relationship, at least I don't know of any), Dr. Mahendra Mishra who works as the state tribal education coordinator in my home state of Orissa as a part of it's Primary Education Program (more at www.opepa.in). Mahendra He...
Design for age, design for all
The NYTimes has a story (For the Advanced in Age, Easy-to-Use Technology) about companies that are creating tools that are "helping those in their 60s maintain their youthful self-images." What is interesting is that these technologies are typically not directly aimed...
Feeling ignored by Warner Bros.
Amol just sent me this BBC story titled: Warner 'sues over Puttar movie.' That makes me so angry! How come Warner Bros is not suing me... As the BBC story says Harry Potter maker Warner Bros is suing an Indian film company over the title of upcoming film Hari Puttar -...
Back from India…
Got back yesterday from a short, hectic but sweet trip to India. I had a wonderful time and still have a lot to do to just document all that happened and connect with all the people I met (hopefully over the next few weeks)... but now it is time to get back to fall...
Day 3: Meetings & Workshop
Day 2 ended with my meeting KHari (aka Chairman) and Rags (aka Chore) - two BITS batchmates, whom I hadn't met in almost 18 / 20 years. It was great catching up with them - but what that meant was that by the time I got back to my room I was totally exhausted and...
Day 2, after lunch, Kozma
I just starred in a movie! Turns out that they are making a documentary about the conference and were interviewing various participants. So I ended up out holding a microphone in front of a conference banner (that would be the background), speaking into a video...
Day 2 Morning session, Mishra & Light
I just completed my presentation Education Technology and Teacher Education, the TPACK framework. I think it went well, though you have to talk to ask the audience what they "really" think. I had been allocated 60 minutes for my talk - but Radha and I discussed...
TAPS / TPACK videos
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)...
Post-lunch session: Nancy Law
The last session of the day was led by Dr. Nancy Law, Director, Centre for Information Technology in Education, University of Hong Kong. Her session was titled Using ICT to support learning: lessons learnt from international studies I met Dr. Law at SITE 2008 and then...
Post-lunch session: Geetha Narayanan
Geetha Narayanan, Director Mallya Aditi International School and Srishti School of Art Design and Technology, is someone I have wanted to meet for a long time. One of the pleasures of of this conference is getting an opportunity to hear her speak ... and I was not...
SET conference: Mid-morning session
The next session State of ET in India Today and was led by fellow BITSian Manas Chakrabarti (now an independent consultant). He led an panel of teachers who have been using technology in their teaching. What was interesting was the manner in which corporate interests...
Links of interest
During Dr. Jalaluddin's keynote I took some time to search online for some reports, prompted by what he had been saying. (Yes I was listening not just browsing). The first is an European study: ICT in Schools: Trends, Innovations and Issues in 2006-2007. You can...
Blogging SETS: Morning session
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. August 20: Morning session: The pre-conference session has been about meeting old...
India’s Silicon Valley
I arrived at Bangalore (now known as Bangaluru) this afternoon. Bangaluru is known as India's Silicon valley and this my first time here. I am here for a conference (as described here). Incidentally, Bangalore is also on its way to becoming a word in the English...
Heading to India
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...
How does my browser know I am Indian?
Over the past few weeks I have noticed that some webpages I visit have banner ads that are targeted to me quite specifically - in particular to my Indian origin. For instance this page (a story about ipods being used by the army) contains a set of banner ads that seek...
Stuff Indian’s Like
After the success of Stuff white people like, can Stuff Indians like be far behind. Check it out... it has the occasional nugget that nails Indians and their behavior.
Obama’s gmail account
Did you know that any email sent to barackobama@gmail.com goes to an Indian software developer! Strange but true!
The political psychology of images
Browsing through Nikita Prokhorov's website (see this posting about Nikita's new blog about the process of creating ambigrams) led me to a fascinating article about how symbols and the historical weight they can carry. I think a similar issue comes up regarding the...
Manoranjan ka baap
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...
Digital convergence…
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? Other authors who would be writing in...
The Brahmin connection
A funny (and yet somewhat sad) story ... So I am in Nagpur airport waiting for my flight, which had been delayed, and I struck up a conversation with a young man there, as one is wont to do. We of course started by complaining about the airlines, then moved on to...
New Delhi, update
I have been at Delhi for the most part since coming to India, meeting people, developing project ideas, catching up… The only breaks have been a short trip to Nagpur (to visit my in-laws) and, coming up, another short trip to Bhubaneswar (to visit my parents). In...
Photography update
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). Go to the...
Meeting Sanjaya Mishra
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...
Summer travel 2008 photographs
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. Go to the photographs