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Video Conferencing and Multimodal Expression of Voice: Children's Communication in a Second Language Using Skype
This thesis focuses on how voice is experienced and expressed in a telecollaborative project using Skype to connect two groups of English language learners of primary age across two different countries. Voice is understood as a social semiotic phenomenon which takes as its base the ideas of Bakhtin (1986) and Goffman (1981) and is expanded to include multimodal forms of expression through the work of Kress (2003). This social semiotic notion of voice is synthesised with a framework of mediated action from Vygotsky (1978) and Wertsch (1991). The theoretical view of voice frames a small-scale qualitative study on how voice is expressed materially involving tools such as verbal language, body language, technology, and the spatial and temporal characteristics within which the communication takes place.
As this is an area that has not been widely researched, a methodology had to be designed to analyse the video recorded data and a framework based on Scollon and Scollonâs (2003) concept of geosemiotics was developed. This method of analysis investigates how language is materially assembled through interaction with others in the physical world around us. It has been rooted in a social constructivist paradigm to shed light on how multimodal expressions of voice through Skype can support childrenâs second language use.
The study shows that webcam-mediated online communication creates particular sets of conditions which affect the ways children are able to express their voice. Some points of divergence from familiar patterns of communication include how children use different spaces to negotiate different ways of being together, the multimodal ways in which children are able to express their voices and the diverse ways in which interpersonal distances can be represented and manipulated to manage conversations. The implications drawn out in the conclusion should initiate wider discussion in early childhood education and second language learning practice and research concerning the importance of adopting a multimodal perspective on how children express voice to support their communication in video conferencing environments
âItâs never okay to say no to teachersâ: childrenâs research consent and dissent in conforming schools contexts
This article examines the limits to children giving research consent in everyday school contexts that emphasises their conformity to comply with adult expectations, and highlights childrenâs competence and agency in navigating this conformity through different practices of dissent. It draws on research into childrenâs agency, using a multimodal ethnography of Year 1 classrooms in two English primary schools. The article includes a reflexive methodological focus, exploring the extent to which I counter the schoolsâ emphasis on conformity. This includes creating visuals for children to practice consent; positioning myself as the researcher in a nonâteacher role, as âleast adultâ and the one who âleast knowsâ; and designing interview spaces markedly different from classrooms. The article examines how children navigate conforming discourses by finding different ways to dissent in the research. Firstly, children demonstrate a sophisticated awareness of the cultural norms of indicating refusals beyond saying the word âNoâ. Secondly, children achieve unnoticeablity, by which they absent themselves from the âonâtaskâ classroom culture, and by extension the research process. Thirdly, they engage in playful dissent, demonstrating their political knowingness of the classroom social order. The article discusses the implications for educational research when the values of consent are in conflict with a schooling focused on conformity. This includes emphasising the limits of consent procedures, paying closer attention to how researchers recognise and respond ethically to childrenâs multiple practices of dissent, and using research to disrupt problematic power structures in education settings that limit possibilities for childrenâs consent
Even a two-year-old can do it! The early stages of learning to understand moving-image media
Film scholarship has consistently avoided discussing how we learn to understand the complex, multimodal systems of communication that moving-image media (referred to here as âmoviesâ) have evolved into over the last 125 years. This article offers some reasons for this neglect: in particular, the popular assumption that movies are extremely easy to understand, and the relative lack of research on two-year-olds â the crucial phase in which this learning must take place. Drawing on a 20-month study of a pair of dizygotic twins, a vignette of their early viewing behaviour illustrates the features of focused attention which characterized their investment of energy in trying to make sense of movies. An analysis of this phenomenon, using concepts from embodied cognition, shows how instinctive responses relate to thought and reflection. Setting two-year-oldsâ movie-watching within the wider contexts of story-reading, play and the enjoyment of repetition, the article provides evidence that such learning does take place and can be seen as a significant aspect of two-year-oldsâ âentry into cultureâ.
 
Childrenâs Toys and Games during the Shoah, as Reflected in Five Hebrew Books
The article will discuss games and toys connected to transmitting the legacy of the Shoah, as reflected in five Hebrew stories: Hadubi shel Fred [Bear and Fred: A World War II Story] by Iris Argaman, Grandpa's Third Drawer: Unlocking Holocaust Memories by Judy Tal Kopelman, Bubah meâerets aheret [A Doll from Another Country] by Ofra Galbert Avni, Hasodot shel savtah [Grandmaâs secrets] by Ayana Friedman-Wirtheim, and Kaleidoscope by Hava Nissimov. The article will depict the toys found in the books as exhibits for transmitting the legacy of the Shoah, as visual symbols that are also sociocultural objects, as a means of survival for children during the Shoah period, and as relators of a narrative that is passed on from one generation to the next. The article will also discuss the illustrations that accompany the text as contributors to their visual symbolic language
All in the Family: Exploring Design Personas of Systems for Remote Communication with Preschoolers
Although there have been recent advances in remote communication technologies that foster
connectedness and intimacy over a distance, systems designed for communicating with preliterate
preschoolersâa desired use caseâare not yet prevalent, nor are there clear guidelines for their design.
We conducted a mixed-methods study to characterize the current practices, goals, and needs of
people who wish to use remote communication systems with young children. We present quantitative
and qualitative findings on the motivations for communicating, the habits, activities, and patterns that
have been established, and the barriers and concerns faced. We synthesized these findings into four
design personas that describe the desired functionality and requirements of systems to support
remote communication with preschoolers. For each persona, we systematically evaluated 60
research-based systems based on the extent to which each personaâs requirements were covered,
demonstrating that none of the personas were greatly satisfied with the available tools
Touching a mechanical body: tactile contact with body parts of a humanoid robot is physiologically arousing
A large literature describes the use of robotsâ physical bodies to support communication with people. Touch is a natural channel for physical interaction, yet it is not understood how principles of interpersonal touch might carry over to human-robot interaction. Ten students participated in an interactive anatomy lesson with a small, humanoid robot. Participants either touched or pointed to an anatomical region of the robot in each of 26 trials while their skin conductance response was measured. Touching less accessible regions of the robot (e.g., buttocks and genitals) was more physiologically arousing than touching more accessible regions (e.g., hands and feet). No differences in physiological arousal were found when just pointing to those same anatomical regions. Social robots can elicit tactile responses in human physiology, a result that signals the power of robots, and should caution mechanical and interaction designers about positive and negative effects of human-robot interactions
(Re)collections: Engaging Feminist Geography with Embodied and Relational Experiences of Pregnancy Losses
With empirically-grounded and theoretically-inferred consideration in this thesis, I bring into focus a vast âcollectionâ of components entailed in lived experiences of pregnancy losses and, in particular, foreground the ways in which spaces and places are intimately involved. This includes, for example, attending to medical settings such as hospitals, workplaces, homes and gardens, online support communities, cemeteries and other memorial locations in addition to bodies which are simultaneously material and emotional. Since pregnancy losses are inter-personal, I also discuss social relations between women, their embryos, foetuses, babies and/or children, medical staff, partners, family members, friends, work colleagues, online group users and âwider societyâ.
The multiplicity of components within, and across, participantsâ experiences serves to simultaneously break apart and reassemble the label I selected for the research of âpregnancy lossesâ. I utilise several sub-disciplines across the thesis, finding a particularly significant and tricky tension between two particular areas I wish to engage: feminist geographies and the geographies of death and dying. My research weaves together feminist, embodied, emotional geographies through which I seek to understand experiences of pregnancy losses. In doing so, I foreground the richness, depth and complexity of lived experiences by developing understandings of pregnancy losses which embrace, rather than sanitise or marginalise, bodily materiality and social relations as well as emotional dynamics.
My thesis serves to bring together and explore the recollections of pregnancy loss experiences, organised around a number of spatial contexts and activities. These are reflected in the focus of each chapter in terms of interior bodies, social relations, bodily fluids, online sites, external skins and practices of memorialisation. My discussions work to âcollectâ together understandings about the somewhat paradoxical fullness and variety of accumulated meanings that can be held about pregnancy loss experiences
Orecchio: Extending Body-Language through Actuated Static and Dynamic Auricular Postures
In this paper, we propose using the auricle â the visible part of the ear â as a means of expressive output to extend body language to convey emotional states. With an initial exploratory study, we provide an initial set of dynamic and static auricular postures. Using these results, we examined the relationship between emotions and auricular postures, noting that dynamic postures involving stretching the top helix in fast (e.g., 2Hz) and slow speeds (1Hz) conveyed intense and mild pleasantness while static postures involving bending the side or top helix towards the center of the ear were associated with intense and mild unpleasantness. Based on the results, we developed a prototype (called Orrechio) with miniature motors, custommade robotic arms and other electronic components. A preliminary user evaluation showed that participants feel more comfortable using expressive auricular postures with people they are familiar with, and that it is a welcome addition to the vocabulary of human body language
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