An Introduction to Korean Culture for Rehabilitation Service Providers

[Excerpt] The purpose of this monograph is to provide recommendations to busy rehabilitation service providers in the U.S. for effectively working with persons who hold traditional Korean values. The topics of Korean history, immigration, culture, language, religion, food, views on disabilities and rehabilitation services typically available in Korea are covered briefly to provide the reader with a quick overview and background. For those who seek more detailed information, the references cited in each section can be used as a starting point. For those with prior background knowledge of Korea, I suggest reading Part II first, in which I introduce Korean culture with case stories in the context of rehabilitation process

Language and literacy development for young toddlers

Language and literacy development is tremendously important for young children in the first year of life. The purpose of this capstone is to discover strategies to foster emergent literacy and implement those strategies. Towell, Bartram, Murrow, & Brown, (2021) suggested several strategies to help educators foster literacy development including lap reading, reading aloud, reading to children from birth, dialogic reading, establishing routines, creating books with children, asking questions, and making comments. According to Dowling, Shanty, Sonnenschein, and Hussey-Gardner (2020), it is never too early to introduce language and literacy skills. Infants learn best through responsive, playful interaction that occur in natural, everyday settings (Dowling et al., 2020). Gillespie (2019) also suggested several strategies for educators including making books readily available and a part of daily routines, read aloud in a casual, conversational manner, and find books that provide sensory experiences. According to Horst, Stewart & True (2019), quality matters and educators should re-read books

The Benefits of Integrating an Assistance Dog with Military Chaplain Corps Services at the 169th Fighter Wing, McEntire Joint National Guard Base, South Carolina

The ministry project is addressing the spiritual resiliency of service members in an intentional and innovative approach through the presence of an assistance dog in an active military Chaplain Corps setting; specifically, through South Carolina Air National Guard. The issue is to reach service members on a level beyond the efforts of human contact. The research shows support in positive effects or no effects of engagement with an assistance dog. The participants are service members engaging with and without Avalon, a current Assistance Dog for Ministry, with a Chaplain providing warrior care. The research data collection is a survey presented to each service member responding to questions about her/his experience with chaplain engagement. Additionally, the survey contains a critique question evaluating the chaplain handler, the content of the sessions and the modality in which the sessions take place. The desired outcome is a creditable document to speak to the resiliency tool provided through the integration of Service Dogs in the military organization

Reflecting on the human dimensions of wild dolphin tourism in marine environments

Purpose – Many studies report on the potential ecological impacts of wild dolphin tourism, risks to people, and economic benefits to local communities. Fewer studies report the social aspects (human dimensions) of dolphin tourism, such as visitor satisfaction and attitudes of participants. This communication postulates that human dimensions are an important consideration in any strategy to keep wild dolphin tourism operations sustainable by balancing the welfare of the dolphins and the desires and expectations of tourists to interact with these charismatic, iconic creatures. Methodology – This communication synthesizes learning gained from a recent quantitative systematic literature review of marine wildlife tourism, a previously unreported review of wild dolphin tourism literature, and a recent study from the Dolphin Discovery Centre in Bunbury, Western Australia. Findings – Human attitudes towards marine mammals ultimately reflect how dolphin tourism is developed and managed. It is therefore important to understand how people experience and perceive dolphin tourism. Wild dolphin tourism is of great value to local economies, tour operators, and visitors who enjoy those experiences. The potential impacts that can arise from dolphin tourism need to be understood and minimised by actions under the control of tour operators and government authorities. This is important to make the satisfaction visitors gain from such experiences worthwhile and to ensure the long-term sustainability of wild dolphin tourism experiences. Originality of the research – Most wild dolphin tourism research has an ecological focus. This communication demonstrates that equally important social research, concerned with understanding visitor awareness, knowledge, expectations, and satisfaction, has a vital role to play in developing best practice management for wild dolphin tourism experiences

Making Time for Friends: A Scientific How-To Guide for Maintaining and Strengthening Friendship in Adulthood

Research has long shown the benefits of social connection for individual well-being. Positive Psychology offers several theories for fostering social connection and yet, throughout our lives we aren’t formally taught how to sustain connections, particularly our cherished friendships. Once you form a friendship, how do you make it last? In this paper, we examine friendship through existing literature and qualitative research leveraging exemplar methodology. Because a pursuit of well-being often includes a pursuit of friendship, we offer research-supported, real-world strategies for maintaining and strengthening friendships in adulthood

Designing an Online Platform to Support Long-distance Romantic Relationships

Nowadays, Long-Distance Relationships (LDRs) are increasingly popular and ubiquitous for many reasons, including travel for career, education, and parent care. Compared to geographically-close relationships; it seems LDRs face many challenges: difficulties in communication, time zone difference, temptations from others, and lack of physical engagement, among other things. While the rise of computer-mediated communication provide many channels for interaction for LDR partners, statistics show that many long-distance relationships still don\u27t last. I focused on two important factors that can impact relationship satisfaction—self-disclosure and a caring response. I employed an online survey to understand how partners self-disclose and show a caring response with each other in long-distance romantic relationships versus in an in-person romantic relationship. I found that the best channel to support self-disclosure and care is video, but video is not as convenient as text. I also discovered that, for most participants, the favorite part of offline communication is being able to see facial expressions and body language, hear tone of voice and have physical contact. Inspired by this research and participant feedback through focus groups, I designed an app called LoveNotes. The app emphasizes facial expression and tone, and uses the connotation of love letters. This app has potential to encourage LDR partners to express emotion and thoughts in a stronger, more accurate, more detectable way

The Post-human Gamer: Reflections on Fieldwork in World of Warcraft

This dissertation offers a longitudinal digital ethnography of a community of hardcore gamers who currently play, or have played, the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMO) World of Warcraft. The central theme embraces the challenge of identifying and voicing the emic perspective of these hardcore players, presenting them as individuals mediating their real lives (IRL, or in real life ) and virtual lives through social media and online multiplayer technologies, including the maintenance of relationships developed within the IRL and in-game spaces they inhabit. The dissertation offers a critical analysis of the hardcore gaming lifestyle as voiced by the gamers themselves, revealing not only their contestation of the boundaries of cultural expression, identity, and community, especially as it pertains to notions of “real” and “virtual” relationships, but also the social costs to their IRL lives. Embedding themselves within a virtual world community by way of immersive computer technologies (modem, PC, VoiP, mouse, and so on), yet conceptualizing this world as a prioritized reality, repositions these players out of the realm of traditional gamers and into one representing a post-human status. Ultimately, through this collaboration with this community of Post-human Gamers, the ethnographer challenges existing portrayals of these cultural groups in the media and within WoW itself, and offers a reflexive examination of the ethnographer\u27s own potentially self-destructive journey of researching the hardcore lifestyle

The Daily Texan

Texas Student Medi

The paradox of Facebook : Interdisciplinary perspectives of social support online and face-to-face

The extensive adoption of social media has provoked widespread debate about how online communication impacts social relationships. An apparent paradox of Facebook is that people simultaneously express feeling more and less connected than ever before. Through perspectives from psychology and communication studies, this thesis addresses a question of public concern: is Facebook making us less social? Psychologists assert that crucial aspects of communication are not mediated online, so face-to-face contact remains uniquely suited to establish genuine, supportive relationships. Communication scholars posit that Facebook facilitates lightweight, frequent contact among users, which helps people build an awareness of support resources within their social network. Common ideas from each discipline are compared about how perceived social support is developed face-to-face and on Facebook. Discrepancies between Psychology and Communication researchers are discussed, including what constitutes “social” behavior and “authentic communication.” The alleged paradox of Facebook is analyzed to reveal deterministic orientations that are prevalent but incomplete ways to understand society's relationship with technology. Key Words: social media, Facebook, social support, interpersonal relationship