Professor Mizuko (Mimi) Ito

• Associate Investigator
• University of California, United States
• @mizuko-ito-17b2
• @mizuko
• Institution Profile
• Google Scholar

Professor Mizuko (Mimi) Ito is a cultural anthropologist of technology use, focusing on children and youth’s changing relationships to media and communications. Mimi’s work centers on how to tap student interests and digital media to fuel learning that is engaging, relevant, and socially connected. She will contribute to the Educated and Healthy Child programs, lending scholarly expertise around informal uses of technology in home and out of school settings, especially in relationship to gaming.

Mimi led the MacArthur Foundation Connected Learning Research Network and Digital Media and Learning Hub. She has managed major research projects and networks with research funding from the MacArthur Foundation, Gates Foundation, Pivotal Ventures, National Science Foundation and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Her co-authored books include Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media and Affinity Online: How Connection and Shared Interest Fuel Learning and the reports, From Good Intentions to Real Outcomes: Equity by Design in Learning Technologies, and The Connected Learning Research Network: Reflections on a Decade of Engaged Scholarship and Social Media and Youth Wellbeing: What We Know and Where We Could Go.

Mimi is a Professor in Residence at the University of California Irvine, Director of the Connected Learning Lab, and co-founder and CEO of Connected Camps.

Earliest digital memory
When my brother gave me Nintendo’s first handheld game for my birthday, a black and white Game & Watch with a juggler that we played with great joy all summer.

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