ExCITe welcomed Mizuko (Mimi) Ito as 2nd next speaker in the Learning Innovation Conversation series in an event on March 21st, 2017 at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. The conversation was a moderated by ExCITe Director Youngmoo Kim. You can view the video on ExCITe's Youtube channel.  

#LearningHero Coverage:

Ito spoke to the importance of mentors in the lives of students, and asked the audience to share stories via twitter and in follow-up. WHYY published these stories in an essay: It takes a 'learning hero' to break out of the education pipeline.  Ito responded to these stories in another WHYY essay: Kids thrive when they swim among peers and mentors with common interests.

Media Coverage of the Mimi Ito Conversation:

• Let’s use tech to close the education gap, not widen it: Mimi Ito, Technically Philly, April 3, 2017 
• The Citizen Recommends: Mimi Ito, The Philadelphia Citizen, March 16, 2017
• Essay: Creating the next generation of innovators by understanding how young people use media, WHYY, March 16, 2017

About Mimi Ito:

Ito is a cultural anthropologist of technology use, examining children and youth’s changing relationships to media and communications. She is Professor in Residence and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning at the University of California, Irvine, with appointments in the University of California Humanities Research Institute, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Informatics, and the School of Education. She chairs the MacArthur Connected Learning Research Network and is Research Director of the Digital Media and Learning Hub. Her co-authored book, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Youth Living and Learning with New Media describes new opportunities for interest-driven learning fueled by games, social media, and digital tools. In Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design Ito and her colleagues in the Connected Learning Research Network map out how education can embrace today’s technology to make meaningful learning available to all young people. She is co-founder of Connected Camps, a benefit corporation that provides online creative learning in Minecraft for kids in all walks of life.