PhD student Thomas Lodato (Digital Media) presented a collaborative paper and design proposal entitled "Learning with Polyphony: AmpDamp" at IConference in Fort Worth, Texas, as part of the Social Media Expo. The expo, sponsored by Microsoft Research's FUSE Labs, asked participants to consider the role of social media in informal and continued learning.

Lodato, along with four other collaborators—Amelia Acker (UCLA), Matt Burton (U. of Michigan), Melissa Chalmers (U. of Michigan), and Grant Wythoff (Princeton), with faculty advisor Cory Knobel (UC Irvine)—won the competition with their proposal for AmpDamp, a knob peripheral to allow rapid filtering of social media streams for contextual learning. The group met during the Values in Design workshop in August, 2012.