Category Archives: Articles

Research on the long-term effects of advisers is mixed, and some programs are now relying on video-game networks and other technology to forge stronger relationships

Such peer mentoring and so-called “affinity networks” are partly a response to the failures of some traditional mentoring programs, according to Mizuko “Mimi” Ito, a UC Irvine cultural-anthropology and informatics professor, who is the hub’s research director and the co-founder of Connected Camps. While well-intentioned, traditional mentoring programs often match adults, teenage, or college-age volunteers with less privileged youngsters, without regard for a real bond, she said.

Read the full story at The Atlantic.

Sometimes it takes a scientist to tell us what we already know. Academic research is confirming that often bland corporate offices are sub-optimal places to work and can at times drive us crazy.

Research by Gloria Mark of the University of California, Irvine, shows that interruptions, even minor ones, lead to rushed work. She notes: “People in the interrupted conditions experienced a higher workload, more stress, higher frustration, more time pressure and effort.”

Read the full story at Raconteur.

The network’s new STEAM advisory board was billed as the latest initiative in that effort, others being teaming with MIT, DIY and Google to promote using computer coding to “express ideas, craft stories and make art.”

Named to the advisory board were DIY CEO Zach Klein; National Girls Collaborative CEO Karen Peterson; Mitch Resnick, a professor at MIT Media Lab; and Diana Skaar, head of business innovation for robotics at X (formerly Google[x]); and Mimi Ito, digital media professor at University of California Irvine.

Read the full story at Multichanel News.

Some people just see the world differently.

Dr Michael Cowling is certainly one of them. He’s determined to leave no technological stone unturned to find better ways of teaching and learning.

The CQUniversity researcher has returned from six months in the USA, working at the cutting-edge of augmented reality and 3D printing with Theresa Jean Tanenbaum and Karen Tanenbaum, from the Transformative Play Lab at University of California Irvine.

Read the full story at The Chronicle.

Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, studied workers and found that they lost some 23 minutes to each interruption. Harris places our attention — and how we use it — in urgent terms: “If the average person surrenders to the world,” he says, “it’s not safe — you get plagued by credit card debt, bad food. The default world doesn’t represent your best interest.”

Read the full story at OZY.

The Nov. 1 launch of a “Minecraft” version tailored for the classroom is exciting educators and parents alike.

“Because they added some new modifications for teachers to better manage their class, and to be able to do things like coding and other things that teachers are interested in, it’s just easier for teachers to adopt it,” says Mimi Ito, research director of the Digital Media and Learning Hub at the University of California—Irvine. Ito also is a co-founder of Connected Camps, a for-profit online learning organization through which teenage coaches use “Minecraft” to teach younger children computer coding and Spanish.

Read the full story at U.S. News & World Report.

Yunan Chen is an associate professor in the Department of Informatics at the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS), and the Institute for Clinical and Translational Science (ICTS) at the University of California, Irvine. Yunan shares her experiences moving from a medical degree in China to a PhD at the intersection of medical informatics and human computer interaction in the US. She also speaks out about her tenure experiences, being part of a long distance relationship, and the struggles negotiating academia and becoming a new mother.

Listen to the interview at Changing Academic Life.

Informatics Professor Bill Tomlinson will speak about “Computing, Sustainability and Global Disruption” as part of the University of Toronto’s Department of Computer Science Distinguished Lecture Series on Nov. 17, 2016. Tomlinson’s talk will discuss his recent work in bringing computational tools to bear on problems of sustainability and disruption; in particular, describing a current research effort that seeks to enable a new approach to sustainable food security.
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If you’re creating an app for an iPad, then why not create it on an iPad too. Is Apple’s Swift move to do this just another step towards the end of the personal computer?

Read the full story at The Conversation.