Category Archives: Articles

Most source code files hosted on GitHub are actually clones of previously created files, according to a recent study conducted by a joint team of researchers from the University of California, Irvine, the Czech Technical University, Microsoft Research, and Northeastern University.

Researchers looked at 4.5 million original (non-forked) GitHub projects, holding a total of 482 million different files. They found that only 85 million files were unique, or approximately 17.63% of all the analyzed files.

Read the full story at Bleeping Computer.

We may not be steering the ship of technical progress, but our students will be. And they’re getting exactly the education they need to make the next generation of tech progress an ethics-driven one.

Read the full story at Medium.

At a recent seminar on video games at UC Irvine, Constance Steinkuehler, a professor of informatics at the school and president of the Higher Education Video Game Alliance, emphasized that most researchers embrace the idea that “play is good.” She also acknowledged that video games, like smartphones, social media and other modern technologies, can have addictive properties.

Read the full story at Los Angeles Times.

Students who represent their schools say it teaches them lessons in strategy, teamwork and time management, and it offers camaraderie with other gamers on campus.

“It really builds a sense of community,” said Griffin Williams, a senior at UC Irvine who captains a team for the game “Super Smash Bros. Melee.” ‘’I actually feel more school pride than I would have had otherwise.”

Read the full story at The Washington Post.

When you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll probably ask for a glass of milk, and then…who knows what he’ll ask for next? Based on the beloved books by Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie follows the adventures of Mouse, Oliver, Moose, Pig, Cat, and Dog, as they discover that when you’ve got a curious Mouse for a friend one thing always leads to another, then another, and then another! The show’s learning approach was developed in consultation with authors Mimi Ito and John Seely Brown and revolves around a cause and effect narrative structure that sparks imagination and the creativity engendered by knowing that possibilities are endless.

Read the full story at Deadline.

In 2017, Constance Steinkuehler and her husband Kurt Squire, another gaming whiz and designer, moved from Madison, Wisconsin, to Southern California to join a virtual wave created by the presence of Blizzard, Riot Games, Naughty Dog, Insomniac Games, Infinity Ward and others. A professor of Informatics at UC Irvine, Steinkuehler is a part of one of the most exciting gamer/education movements in the world.

“I’m going to build an empire here,” Steinkuehler said. “California is the land of digital milk and honey.”

Read the full story at the OC Register.

Interruptions at work are a pandemic. Professionals get bombarded constantly from all sides. A typical manager gets interrupted every three minutes at work, according to Gloria Mark, associate professor at the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. It’s no wonder that, by the end of the day, we feel frayed but not accomplished. To make matters worse, we interrupt ourselves nearly as often as others interrupt us. Be honest: How many times each day do you find yourself checking Instagram or compulsively tidying your inbox?

Read the full story at Forbes.

“Scrappy educators and hackers and YouTubers kept adding stuff on, and it was very much an organic, geek-led movement,” says Mimi Ito, a cultural anthropologist at UC Irvine who studies how children and teens use media. She is also the founder of an online Minecraft summer camp.

Ito compares the game to a skateboarding park: a place that kids flock to and have a blast while also picking up wicked cool new tricks. “Kids are mostly hanging out, but they’re also learning from each other,” she explains. “Some are more advanced and are displaying their skills, so there are open invites to level up.”

Read the full story at NPR.

Hardly anyone present at the conference needed much convincing about the potential of games to delight, educate and heal. Yet that’s still not the case for the parents and policymakers who wield influence in how they’re funded or built, notes Constance Steinkuehler. The professor at the informatics department at the University of California, Irvine (and who formerly was a games advisor at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy) offered 10 studies that all skeptics—and anyone talking to them—should read and reference.

Read the full story at EdSurge.

Along with the game winners, the award ceremony named Constance Steinkuehler, Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, the Vanguard Award winner for her contribution to the advancement of Games for Change.

Read the full story at Rolling Stone.