Mimi Ito - Weblog

I'm happy to announce (a bit belatedly) the first book in the Technologies of the Imagination series I am editing with Ellen Seiter with University of Michigan Press' digitalculturebooks imprint. Emily Chivers Yochim's Skate Life: Re-Imagining White Masculinity is a nuanced look at the culture and practice of skateboarders. The description of skate culture draws from popular media, as well as ethnographic research with skaters in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I have to credit Ellen and our editors Tom Dwyer and Alison Mackeen (formerly at UMich Press and now at Yale U Press) for seeing this book through to publication, but I am super proud to be able to claim it as part of our series!

Continue reading "Skate Life" »

As of this week, I am officially part of Wikimedia's advisory board. I'm super excited to be part of the Wikimedia team and community, and am feeling rosy about the promise of all I will learn and hopefully even contribute. Like hordes of other net users, I rely on Wikipedia almost daily as my outboard brain, a taken-for-granted benefit of living in a networked age. I've made some edits and contributions to Wikipedia along the way, but mostly I've treated it as a public resource there for the taking. When I visited Wikimedia a few months ago, and took a look at their developing strategic plan, it was my first sustained look at some of the complexities of infrastructure and governance that lurk beneath the surface of a public resource that is quietly indispensable in my life.

I was interested to learn from the strategic plan that Wikimedia is currently sustainable by community contributions. The Wikimedia Foundation has received support from a range of private donors, including foundations, but the core financial support for Wikipedia is community-generated. As such, it follows in the footsteps of other member-supported models of public media, but is unique in not having a history of government funding, and having a transnational scope. And of course, unlike public television and radio, Wikipedia is not only community supported, but is community created. "We" the public donate not only our dollars but our labor, keeping the centralized costs of media making and distribution at a minimum.

Continue reading "Wikimedia and the Future of Public Media" »

I have been working for most of my research career in the field of digital media and learning, an area that was just emerging in my years as a graduate student, and has more recently become a growing and recognized area of research and practice. In the past five years, I have benefited from the MacArthur Foundation's investment in this area, and today, in tandem with the Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age event, have a series of happy announcements to make that represent many pieces of this work coming to fruition.

First, we are opening the doors today on a new Digital Media and Learning Research Hub, and it's web site. DMLcentral.net. The research hub and website is a key component of the broader MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Initiative, and is made possible by a grant that David Goldberg and I received at the University of California Humanities Research Institute. The Hub will be facilitating research collaboration, organizing an annual conference, in addition to operating the DMLcentral.net web site. The press release of the announcement can be found here.

The launch of the Hub and DMLcentral also coincides with the publication of two of my books.

Continue reading "Announcing the Digital Media and Learning Hub, dmlcentral.net, and 2 new books" »

For the past year or so, I've been working with David Theo Goldberg at the University of California Humanities Research Institute in planning for and establishing a new research hub in digital media and learning. This is part of the work of the MacArthur Foundation in supporting research and field-building in this area. Starting this fall, we've been kicking off a new range of activities meant to support communication and collaboration. One centerpiece of our efforts is an annual conference that we are organizing, the first of which will be convened in San Diego February 18-20. The theme is "Diversifying Participation" and Henry Jenkins will be chairing. I will be part of the conference committee, together with David Goldberg, Heather Horst, Jabari Mahiri, and Holly Willis.

One of the problems with a new and highly interdisciplinary field is that there are few conferences and journals that really cater to our specific areas of interest. The MacArthur Foundation helped start the International Journal of Learning and Media to address this gap. The conference is the next step in this field-building effort.

The deadline for session proposals is approaching quickly -- October 30! Please consider submitting something and joining us for the event. I am confident that we will look back at this inaugural year of the event as the start of something memorable. There is a wiki for session organizing and more details below.

Continue reading "First Annual Digital Media and Learning Conference" »

Next week, I will be presenting a response paper for the National Academy of Science's Committee on Learning Science: Computer Games, Simulations, and Education. They are convening a workshop, open to the public, on games for science education. It should be an interesting meeting for games and learning folks in the DC area. I am presenting a paper in response to Kurt Squire's look at science games and simulations in informal learning environments. The text of my response is below.

Continue reading "Sociocultural Contexts of Game-Based Learning" »