EdSurge: “Has the Game Really Changed? Notes From the 2017 Games for Change Festival” (Steinkuehler cited)

August 2, 2017

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.

Steinkuehler receives Games for Change Vanguard Award

Informatics Professor Constance Steinkuehler, best known for her pioneering social informatics research into video game culture and learning, received the Vanguard Award at this year’s 14th Annual Games for Change Festival and VR for Change Summit (G4C 2017), which was held July 31-Aug. 2, 2017 at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. Vanguard Award recipients are recognized for their significant work as mentors, advocates and champions of the next generation of video game creators. Steinkuehler also delivered one of the event’s opening keynote addresses on “10 Important Findings from the Research on Games for Impact: A Look Back Over the Last Decade of Research with Constance Steinkuehler.”
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Olsons co-author article on writing simultaneously in August 2017 issue of CACM magazine

July 26, 2017

Gary and Judy Olson, professors emeriti of informatics and fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), co-authored an article for the August 2017 (Vol. 60, No. 8) issue of Communications of the ACM magazine titled “Now That We Can Write Simultaneously, How Do We Use That to Our Advantage?” The article, co-authored by technical writer Ricardo Olenewa and Google Senior Research Scientist Daniel Russell, uses a collection of stories to discuss how word processors now make it possible for multiple authors to work on the same document concurrently, while also examining how we can harness this capability to work more efficiently, what can be done with simultaneous writing and when simultaneously writing is not the best choice. Read the full article online.

Sydney Morning Herald: “Wordplay: A cryptic-shaped hole” (Mark cited)

July 24, 2017

Professor Gloria Mark knows all about distraction. In 2015, working with her team at the Department of Informatics, based in the Uni of California, Mark studied how often our focus is compromised. Subjects were observed over three dozen offices, their working days vulnerable to phones or colleagues, emails or rival chores.

The study was a sequel to Mark’s matching study in 2000, where the average attention span had been 12 seconds. This time round? Try eight seconds, roughly the duration of a goldfish, minus the benefit of a sunken castle.

Read the full story at The Sydney Morning Herald.

Bowker named Chancellor’s Professor

July 21, 2017

Geoffrey Bowker, informatics professor and EVOKE Lab and Studio director, has been named a UCI Chancellor’s Professor. Granted for a five-year term, the distinguished title recognizes UCI professors who have demonstrated unusual academic merit and who continue notable achievement in scholarship.

A leading international scholar of informatics and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Bowker’s research focuses on web and digital resource uses and how these new classification systems transform our understanding of classic knowledge. He is noted for merging literary and social theory, art and history, and policy studies with computer science to create new technologies and digital experiences.

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KPBS: “Comic-Con For Educators” (GeekEd panel of Informatics faculty highlighted)

July 20, 2017

GeekEd #2: Shall We Play a Game?:
A panel of game scholars discuss how building better games, identifying the biases within them, and the act of “play” helps people empathize with others and provides them with a guideline for this work on college campuses. This panel of scholars will explore the intersection of games, learning and inclusivity in the context of curriculum development, activism, policy, history and game design. Panelists include Constance Steinkuehler (UC Irvine; Senior Policy Analyst, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy 2011-2012), Bonnie Ruberg (UC Irvine), Kurt Squire (UC Irvine), Amanda Cullen (UC Irvine) and Aaron Trammell (UC Irvine).

Read the article at KPBS.

Inside Higher Ed: “Educational games expand classroom learning” (Squire quoted)

July 19, 2017

All of these adventures are video-enabled, thanks to a handful of sophisticated educational games designed for college classrooms. Used in conjunction with a textbook and traditional lectures, the games are “like a lab experience,” said Kurt Squire, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, who helped design the astronomy video game At Play in the Cosmos when he was with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Read the full story at Inside Higher Ed.

Ruberg publishes article on the feminist history of online security questions in Summer 2017 issue of Feminist Media Histories

July 14, 2017

Assistant Professor of Informatics Bonnie Ruberg had her article, “What Is Your Mother’s Maiden Name? A Feminist History of Online Security Questions,” published in the Summer 2017 issue of Feminist Media Histories. This special issue of the international journal focuses on data and feminism. By tracing the evolution of the security question, Ruberg’s article surveys industry writings on authentication protocols from the 1850s to the present, arguing for a re-evaluation of the often-unquestioned logics that perpetuate discrimination through technologies of data.
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