News

Judy Olson, Donald Bren Professor Emerita in Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, spoke April 3 at the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology.

Read the story at Penn State News.

Who is your learning hero? Who would you say has been an inspirational person in your life who has unlocked new ideas and pushed you to learn?

Cultural anthropologist Mizuko “Mimi” Ito asked that question when she spoke last month at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University about technology use, and how the ways in which kids’ relationship with media and communication is changing might lead to innovations in education. Her presentation was part of an ongoing project of Drexel’s ExCITe Center, called “Learning Innovation.”

Read the full story at Newsworks.

Only 26% of computing professionals are women, which is down from 36% in 1991. Millions of dollars are being spent on closing this gender gap, but it persists. Even though girls are just as into math and science in their school years, few go onto major in these areas, and even fewer go on to tech careers. What can we do to help our daughters buck these odds? Girls and Minecraft offer important hints.

Read the full story at Connected Camps.

Mimi Ito is challenging the common conception that games and social media detract from learning. At her talk late last month at the Academy of Natural Sciences, she spoke of her vision for technology to close the gap in education inequity rather than widen it.

Read the full story at Technical.ly.

The idea, say those who are eschewing email, is to have more time for other types of work and communication. In fact, higher email use is associated with lower levels of productivity and higher levels of stress, according to Gloria Mark, a professor at the University of California Irvine who was the lead author on the 2014 study with this finding.

Read the full story at BBC.

“Our ambition is to model engaged, relevant and responsive interdisciplinary scholarship, accountable to making a real and positive impact.” — Mimi Ito

Read the full story at DML Central.

Daniel M. Russell, a senior research scientist at Google, said that as technology rapidly changes, “it’s tied to our ways of thinking. It affects us in the way we think, the way we frame and the way we reason. And, how we learn is highly dependent upon the technology we bring into the classroom or the technology you have in your pocket or you have at home.”

Read the full story at DML Central.

Gloria Mark, an informatics researcher at UC Irvine, studies workplace interruptions, multitasking, and procrastination. She has found that not all disruptions destroy productivity. You’re welcome.

Listen to the story at Bloomberg.