To Seattle’s homeless young people, music players matter

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

The Cutatune is a music player that fits on your arm like a cuff. To play it, you run a thin rubber stylus through three slots at the top of the device. “This was interesting to Maria because that was the spot where she most frequently cut,” wrote its designer, a homeless young woman in Seattle. “She was soothed and lost the urge to cut herself.” The Cutatune does not exist. Neither does the Musical Blanket, the Nicatune, the Music Emote or any of the dozens of imaginary music players that will be featured in “Music is My Life,” an art show set to open Thursday in Molly’s C

Denmark Exploration Seminar funded by Scan|Design Foundation

Friday, May 24, 2013

iSchool Faculty Trent Hill and Nancy Gershenfeld have received a grant of $42,000 from the Scan|Design Foundation by Inger and Jens Bruun to fund the 2013 iSchool Denmark Exploration Seminar (iDES). The 4-week program is held in collaboration with the Royal School of Library and Information Science (RSLIS) at the University of Copenhagen. Participating students include 17 from three programs at the iSchool and 10 international students from RSLIS, Humboldt University in Berlin and Wuhan University in China. The iDES is based on iSchool courses and consists of&nbs

iSchool research featured in national policy document

Friday, May 24, 2013

The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) just released its Broadband Adoption Toolkit, a document aimed at sharing best practices developed from broadband adoption and digital literacy projects funded by the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP). The Toolkit is a guide to planning and carrying out effective adoption programs with a wide variety of audiences, including youth, low-income, and seniors. It includes chapters on planning a new program, designing outreach and communications activities, setting up training classe

iSchool wins Telly award for iOn the Future documentary

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

The Telly Awards has named the University of Washington Information School as a Silver winner in the 34th Annual Telly Awards for the iOn the Future documentary. With nearly 11,000 entries from all 50 states and numerous countries, this is truly an honor. iOn the Future is an hour-long documentary created to showcase the innovative work of iSchool faculty and the impact the iSchool has made since its founding in 1911.  The Telly Awards was founded in 1979 and is the premier award honoring outstanding local, regional, and cable TV commercials and programs, the fin

iSchool MSIM student selected as UW Graduate School Gonfalonier

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Rajesh Subramanian, a graduating master of science in information management (MSIM) student, has been selected by the Graduate School to be one of only two master’s students from the UW Seattle campus who will serve as gonfaloniers – banner carriers – at the Commencement ceremony on June 15 in CenturyLink Field. Gonfaloniers are nominated by their program advisors and must exemplify graduate education at the UW: excellence in learning, teaching, mentoring and/or research. They are announced by name as they enter the stadium, featured in the commencement program, and sent to the n

Informatics students shine in Undergraduate Research Symposium

Friday, May 17, 2013

iSchool Informatics students presented nine research projects as part of the Sixteenth Annual UW Undergraduate Research Symposium, one of the largest in the country. The event attracts more than 1,000 student participants from all disciplines and across all three UW campuses. The Symposium provides an opportunity for students to explain their work to a general audience, resulting in valuable discussions among faculty, staff, students and community members. Half of the Informatics projects in this year’s Symposium involved work done for Capstone – the culminating project required for

Access Lens technology helps blind people lead more autonomous life

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Associate Professor Jacob Wobbrock and iSchool Ph.D. graduate Shaun Kane, who is now and Assistant Professor at University of Maryland, have developed a new way for blind people to use accessible gestures on paper documents and other physical objects, such as product packages, device screens, and home appliances to provide audio feedback about these objects. Called Access Lens, the hardware and software system was developed in collaboration with blind computer users and was featured in an article on Discovery.com. Wobbrock and Kane presented their research paper at CHI 2013.  Access

Joshua Blumenstock awarded a $150,000 grant from IPA

Thursday, May 16, 2013

A new grant from the Financial Capability Research Fund, a collaboration between Innovations Poverty Action (IPA) and Citi, will fund a study to evaluate a mobile phone-based employee savings program in Afghanistan. iSchool Assistant Professor Joshua Blumenstock is working with one of Afghanistan’s leading mobile communications providers and a team of researchers to design and implement a way for people to automatically  have funds deducted from their monthly paycheck and deposited into a savings account using their mobile phones. The new savings account program will be the first

iSchool Informatics students win Deloitte Case Competition

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

For the second year in a row, Information School students took first place in the 2013 Deloitte Case Competition. Informatics students (pictured left) Curtis Howell, Evan Griffith, Suparno Chakrabarti, along with fellow team mate Jim Inoue from the business school/computer science, won the top spot among the 25 competing teams. Howell, along with two iSchool master of science in information science students, won in 2012. The four students had at least one advantage: between them they had experience from doing more than 20 Case Competitions. They are also involved in a University o

What information competencies do employers need from recent college grads?

Monday, May 13, 2013

A newly released paper tackles one of the thorniest issues in higher education: What competencies make today's college graduates hirable? The paper, co-authored by Project Information Literacy's (PIL's) director Alison Head, iSchool doctoral students Jordan Eschler and Sean Fullerton, and California Maritime Academy librarian, Michele Van Hoeck, appears in this month's Library and Information Research's special issue on workplace information literacy and lifelong learning. Findings are based on 23 US employers and focus groups with a total of 33 recent graduates from four US colleges and

Meditation and mutlitasking research cited in Huffington Post

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

David Levy and Jacob Wobbrock's research on the benefits of meditation training was cited in a Huffington Post article by Elisha Goldstein.  Goldstein writes, "Research suggests you look into mindfulness training.In 2012, David Levy and Jacob Wobbrock, Information School professors at the University of Washington, conducted a study with Human Resource Managers and asked them to engage in multitasking through all the usual methods of calendar, email, instant messaging, word-processing, and others and measured their stress. They split them up into three groups, one made up of partic

Michael D. Crandall named Distinguished Alumnus for 2013

Thursday, May 2, 2013

The 2013 recipient of the University of Washington Information School’s Distinguished Alumnus Award is Michael D. Crandall, a 1986 graduate of the MLIS program. Crandall is a Senior Lecturer in the iSchool, and has chaired the Masters of Science in Information Management program for the better part of a decade. In choosing Crandall, the selection committee considered his many decades of information-access work in both the private sector and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and well as his later academic work bridging the iSchool’s MLIS, MSIM and Informatics programs. Crandall

Katie Davis' digital badge project featured in Seattle Times

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

In the article,"The future of credentials: Will degrees and resumes make room for the badge?," Seattle Times writer Monica Guzman interviews iSchool Assistant Professor Katie Davis about her new research project that will study the badge program being adopted by the Providence After School Alliance in Rhode Island. The article notes, "The program, which won funding from Mozilla, the MacArthur Foundation and others, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is out to give kids credit for learning that happens outside the classroom." Digital badges are given as an award for an achiev

MLIS students revitalize Audubon Center library

Friday, April 26, 2013

What could be better than working at a library in a park - especially a Seattle City Park that features a stand of old-growth forest, two active bald eagle nests, and a wide array of flora and fauna? For two masters of library and information science (MLIS) students, the answer to that was the opportunity to organize and offer broader access to an underutilized special collection library housed at the Seward Park Environmental & Audubon Center (the Center).  The Center, located in a renovated historic building, is the flagship environmental and nature conservation center for the

Barbara Endicott-Popovsky appointed to National CyberWatch Committee

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

In response to a significant increase in the number, severity and consequences of cyber attacks, CyberWatch is evaluating Centers of Excellence with the goal of making academic programs stronger sources of training skilled experts in the field of cybersecurity. CyberWatch is an Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Center, headquartered at Prince George’s Community College and funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Their goal is to improve information assurance education at all levels: high school, associate, baccalaureate, and advanced degree levels. “I’ve