Punya Mishra's Web

https://punyamishra.com/blog

38 posts

Writing 29% · Culture 24% · Tech 21% · Life 11% · Politics 8% · Science 8%

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  1. Of Three Minds

    I was of three minds,Like a treeIn which there are three blackbirds.—Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” I thought of Stevens’s three minds earlier today when I looked at my calendar for the upcoming week. That’s what I usually do on Sundays, just making sure there are no surprises coming up. And […]

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  2. SITE 2026: There in Spirit

    SITE is my conference. It has been for years now, and not being able to attend this year’s meeting in Philadelphia was bittersweet, to say the least. But even though I couldn’t be there in person, our team had a strong presence, and that’s what matters. A huge shoutout to Lindsey McCaleb for stepping up […]

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  3. 27 Windows on the Universe (01): The Fan Letter

    This is the first in a series of posts about the human side of science, based on interviews with 27 leading cosmologists. The series explores what drew these scientists to the universe, how they think, what drives them, and what shaped their paths. 01: How this series began Sometime around 2013, I did something I […]

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  4. AI in Education: Digital Education Dialogues Podcast

    In this episode of Digital Education Dialogues, the discussion centers on the intersection of AI, teacher training, and the future of educational innovation. It was fun to be a guest on a show run by Chris Dede, since we are usually co-hosts on Silver Lining for Learning. Chris along with is co-host Waleed Al Ali, […]

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  5. The Autocomplete That Didn’t: Three More Reads on Dampuni

    I recently wrote a post about my son Soham, aged two, replacing words in the Humpty Dumpty poem with a nonsense sound (“Dampuni”) and what that small act of linguistic mischief reveals about play, evolution, and how children learn. I thought I was done with it. I was not. The story kept nagging at me. […]

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  6. Humpty Dumpty Sat on a … Dampuni: Play, Evolution, and Futures Thinking

    When my son Soham was about two, we used to sing nursery rhymes together. He knew them well, I knew he knew them and most importantly, he knew that I knew that he knew them. That last part is critical. Anyway, one evening I decided to start Humpty Dumpty. “Soham, wanna sing Humpty Dumpty?” “Ya. […]

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  7. Large Language Models and Intelligent Tutoring Systems: Conflicting Paradigms and Possible Solutions

    I have a new chapter out, co-authored with Danielle McNamara, Gregory Goodwin, and Diego Zapata-Rivera, in the latest volume of Design Recommendations for Intelligent Tutoring Systems (Volume 12: Generative Artificial Intelligence), edited by Anne Sinatra, Vasile Rus, Arthur Graesser, and Paige Lawton. Danielle was originally invited to contribute to this volume and asked if I’d […]

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  8. Six Years, 266 Episodes, and One Persistent Question

    On March 11, 2020, my friend Yong Zhao sent me an email. “I am interested in a thought experiment about education,” he wrote. “What if the Coronavirus forces schools to close for more than a year? I think this is a great opportunity to do some imagination and re-imagination.” That email went to Chris Dede, […]

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