Mimi Ito - Weblog

Digital Kids

My primary focus right now is a project on Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media that I am working on together with my co-PIs Peter Lyman and Michael Carter. The project is funded by the MacArthur Foundation, and involves three years of basic ethnographic research on how kids engage with and play with new media in their everyday lives. Some recent press coverage on this work is here.

DIY Video

I am in the midst of planning an event, 24/7: A DIY Video Summit, that showcases current developments in digital video production, focusing on amateur production, remix, and Internet distibution. The summit will bring together makers, academics, technologists, and activists who have a stake in the future of net video.

Keitai and Portable Computing

I've been working for several years with Daisuke Okabe and a research group at Docomo House at Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus, studying the everyday pratices of portable technology use in Japan. Our research appears in a book we co-edited with Misa Matsuda, Personal Portable Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life. Our current work focuses on visual communication and on mobile kits. We're collaborating with Intel's People and Practices Group for the mobile kit work.

Otaku and Amateur Cultural Production

My other area of research is on how kids engage with, remix, and remake anime related popular cultures. I have a recent paper draft and I have a few ideas on why otaku media literacy is important. The best part is to be able to play Yugioh and watch Naruto as part of my job.

Children's Software

My doctoral work in Education and Anthropology looked at the production and consumption of children's software. I did field work at the Fifth Dimension After-School Clubs on how kids played with educational games, and I interviewed children's software producers. My Education dissertation focused on the content of the games and play. My Anthropology dissertation Engineering Play, analyzed "multimedia genres" of edutainment, entertainment, and authoring, that cross- cut production, distribution, marketing, andplay.

Japanese Interculturalism

As my childhood was spent split between both Japan and the US, Japanese interculturalism and Japan/US relations is a personal as well as professional topic of interest. My junior high and high school yearswere spent at Nishimachi International School and the American School in Japan. As a personal project, I have been working since 1999 on establishing an online community (now a multi-author blog) for Japanese interculturals, chanpon.org

Broadening Access: An Ethnography of SeniorNet

In 1998 and 1999, I conducted an ethnographic study with SeniorNet, a national network of computer using seniors. Fellow researchers: Annette Adler, Charlotte Linde, Elizabeth Mynatt, and Vicki O'Day. Research conducted atThe Institute for Research on Learning(IRL), The Broadening Access Research Project Page reports on the result of this study.