News Archives - New Media

New Media is hiring a tenure-track professor

Join the University of Maine’s innovative New Media program! We’re seeking a dynamic, tenure-track Assistant Professor with a passion for creativity and collaboration.

Can we trust AI in the classroom?

New Media’s Learning With AI partnership with Computer Science and other campus units continues to explore new creative and ethical questions posed by the rapid rise of AI. Its recommendations include a framework for deciding when it’s OK to use ChatGPT and a novel approach to assigning a term paper.

New Media launches AI-powered education initiative

How will education adapt to a landscape transformed by generative AI, where ChatGPT can write a term paper or coding assignment in a matter of seconds and Midjourney can create digital images from a phrase like “vintage photo of Amazon rainforest” or “self-portrait in the style of van Gogh”?

NFT, TikTok vulnerabilities at heart of New Media research

In 2022 New Media faculty probed the strengths and weaknesses of NFTs and TikTok, two of the biggest digital trends in recent years. Their research was cited in Wired, Forbes, and The New York Observer and presented in conferences in New York, London, Instanbul, and Shanghai.

Decentering the Web: Glen Weyl 2022 Digital Curation teleconference

Building a trustworthy web

The Internet has recently been blamed for undermining democracy, eroding trust in facts, and stoking partition divides. A conference organized by New Media and Digital Curation examines a proposal to rekindle faith in a safe and trustworthy web.

David Lavoie at the SCIS Showcase, Orono 2022

Student showcase highlights outpouring of student creativity across SCIS

After a year and a half of coping with challenges caused by COVID-19, students in the School of Computing and Information Science are re-emerging to reimagine a post-pandemic world.

Aubree Nygaard with SCIS Director Penny Rheingans and Philosophy professor Kirsten Jacobson

SCIS students win several top college honors

The 2021-22 academic year saw another record of extraordinary undergraduate achievement in the School of Computing and Information Science. Our students won six university-wide research awards as well as Outstanding Senior in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

New Media alumni share the secrets of a successful career in 2022

New media careers in 2022 Thursday 20 January 12:30-1:30pm EST View interactive recording Join us for a free webinar with alumni of UMaine’s New Media program, who will share practical advice for choosing and sustaining a creative life in the 21st-century job market. The career landscape of 2022 offers a rich array of options for […]

A pie chart of all Digital Curation job titles from 2021

UMaine study suggests pandemic has spurred digital curation jobs

Even during an economic downturn, digital curation openings surged 61% from 2019 to 2021, according to a recent study conducted by UMaine’s Digital Curation faculty. One cause may be the pandemic’s effect on institutions that depend on public outreach and access, which have increasingly turned to new techniques for engaging their audiences over the Internet.

Joline Blais and Stephanie Burnett in the Roger Clapp Greenhouse

Stillwater Ripple Links Students with Community Partners

StillWater Ripple Organizations working to make a better world may soon get help from students with design and technical skills, thanks to a new initiative from Still Water, a lab at the University of Maine dedicated to studying and building creative networks, Crises like climate change and the pandemic require smart and creative people, yet […]

Teleconference Examines How Evidence Has Changed in the Digital Era

Legal evidence, like other forms of information, has become increasingly electronic. Shelley Lightburn of the International Court of Justice examines how the digital revolution is impacting the judicial process in the latest teleconference in UMaine’s Digital Curation program.

Knowledge Bites webinar teaches responsive web design

UMaine’s free New Media webinars continue this year, starting on December 6th with a hands-on workshop on coding a website that looks great on both big desktop screens and smaller mobile devices.

New Media celebrates the life of dynamic founder Owen Smith

The New Media program at the University of Maine is saddened by the loss of one of our earliest champions, Owen F. Smith. An art professor who was associated with New Media since its inception, Smith made extraordinary contributions to the program and the university.

New Media faculty decode the meteoric rise of NFT art

Recent headlines about digital art selling for millions of dollars are evidence the rise of NFTs has shaken the art world. In a series of public talks and workshops, New Media faculty show how NFTs work and how to separate their promise from the hype.

New Media launches online alumni network

The New Media program has launched a special Slack team just for its alumni (and seniors). Any current seniors or former new media majors can join in to share notes on job opportunities, technical advice, and other new media news.

New Media major Jake Hotaling wins prestigious film awards

Dragonfly Boy, a film by Jake Hotaling, has won three Awards of Merit from IndieFEST, a San Francisco-based organization whose judges are highly qualified professionals in the film and television industry. In winning an IndieFEST award, this New Media Major joins the ranks of other high-profile winners of this internationally respected award, including Liam Neeson, […]

Faculty, grad student share techniques for making coding easier for everyone

A New Media teaching assistant and professor team up to make programming more appealing to women, minorities, and other underrepresented groups in Inclusive Techniques for Teaching Code. This presentation for teachers in the US northeast is part of Project Login’s first-ever CS Summer of Fun in conjunction with the Code.org CS Summer Institute.

Seniors mount New Media exhibitions in virtual space

From a web-based gallery of videos, to a virtual opening surrounded by 3d mountains, to an afterparty conversation around a digital campfire, this year’s New Media seniors found unusual ways to celebrate their innovative capstones with their families and classmates.

Digital Curation program hosts free webinar with renowned preservationist

UMaine’s Digital Curation program is thrilled to host a free public webinar with “free-range archivist” Jason Scott on Wednesday 5 May at 2pm EDT as part of its regular teleconference series.

Alumnus Ryan Genz wins Time magazine Invention of the Year

Alumnus Ryan Genz and his partner Francesca Rosella of CuteCircuit have won one of Time magazine’s Best Inventions of 2020. Their “SoundShirt” is outfitted with 30 tiny haptic motors that vibrate according to sound, enabling the wearer to feel music “in a visceral way.”

Knowledge Bites webinar on New Media careers

“Knowledge Bites” webinars offer digital skill-building, career advice

Following the success of New Media’s December “Knowledge Bites” webinar on coding a mobile app, this webinar tackles a topic requested by three-quarters of respondents to our recent poll: how to find and get jobs that make creative use of digital media and computing. The presenters will be recent graduates of the University of Maine’s […]

Newspaper, TV stories feature New Media student COVID projects

Apps and games made by New Media seniors have won acclaim in newspaper and TV stories that profile how they responded to COVID-19.

New Media seniors win seven university research awards

New Media seniors have been honored with a record-setting seven university awards for 2020-2021. The creative approaches recognized by these prestigious fellowships include apps, games, and an installation designed to help students cope with the anxieties of contemporary life, especially under a global pandemic.

Karolina Kawiaka and John Bell, Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas in VR

New Media faculty train curators to make a museum app

For the 2020 Maine Archives and Museums conference on October 8th, New Media professor Jon Ippolito offers a virtual but hands-on workshop that walks curators through making an iPhone or Android app to engage visitors with their collections.

New Media faculty weigh in on TikTok ban

Is the US government right to outlaw TikTok because it might share data with a foreign power, or is the security threat overstated? News outlets interviewed New Media faculty to get a different take on a proposed ban on the popular social media app.

“Ripple” initiative aims to connect creators and communities

Organizations working to make a better world may soon get help from students with design and technical skills, thanks to a new initiative from Still Water, a lab at the University of Maine dedicated to studying and building creative networks,

Learn to make mobile apps with these free tutorials

Knowing how to make mobile apps in 2020 is like knowing how to make a website in 2000: a skill much in demand but known by few. Now anyone hoping to learn to create apps for iOS or Android can take advantage of a free suite of interactive tutorials from the University of Maine’s New […]

At the Edge of Art by Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito

Can artists help us design ethical technology?

How has the boundary between art and non-art shifted in the Internet age, and what does that mean for design, activism, science, and other creative activities? This question is the subject of a Dario Moalli’s fall 2019 interview with New Media faculty and Still Water co-directors Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito in the venerable periodical […]

Student-built app helps Maine farmers grow food year-round

Consumers are increasingly eager to eat local produce, but farm-to-table options in the cold season aren’t always easy to find in a northern state like Maine. That could change thanks to a new mobile app designed to help farmers optimize greenhouse conditions in the winter months, from a team led by New Media faculty and […]

New Media students craft Covid19 stories

COVID-19 came suddenly and with a wallop, forcing classes to operate remotely, canceling sports events, and leaving campuses empty last spring. Fortunately, New Media faculty and students have already been experimenting with digital tools for collaboration, like e-portfolios, web-based F2F classes, videoconferencing and discussion platforms like Slack.