The Perceived Appropriateness of Digital Games From ELL Teachers

The integration of digital games into learning aligns with society's needs in the 21st century. Although research shows that digital games have numerous benefits for students, such as psychological and language improvements, some teachers are skeptical of using digital games for classroom activities, due to their perceived negative impact. In this study, six ELL teachers in the upper Midwest of the United States were interviewed to examine their perceived appropriateness of digital games in teaching and learning. Findings indicate that the majority of the ELL teachers interviewed perceived serious games in a positive light, while they unanimously agreed that violent digital games could have a negative impact on a child's psychological, emotional, and social life. The teachers highlighted the rate at which children play those games, their violent nature, appropriateness, cyber bulling implication, and the need for an oversight from parents and teachers as reasons why.

Framing dementia experiences in a positive light: Conversational practices in one couple living with dementia

The general approach to a life with dementia is negatively charged, and alternative views are rarely found in research or in media coverage. This case-study explores conversational practices for framing dementia in a more positive light, employed by a husband of a wife with dementia. Framing regards the structured experiences of dementia, drawing on Goffman’s ‘Frame Analysis’. Benefitting from conversation analysis, this article presents principal results of four conversational practices used by the spouse without dementia: mitigating trouble, normalising trouble, justifying trouble, and praising. The conclusions drawn are that the practices contribute to the challenging of the dominant negative framework of the dementia experience, as they facilitate talk which emphasises the wife with dementia’s positive progression and skills in managing the household chores. Despite a positive framing of dementia, this couple still embed their talk in the overall negative framework of loss and decreased cognitive competence. The visualisation of a positive framing could add to a broadened view of dementia, which in turn could contribute to greater well-being for those affected. However, the results may also imply a risk of one spouse’s conversational practices of normalising and mitigating trouble being dominant in interaction and thereby neglecting the other spouse’s experience of the situation.

Tourism and environment in cyberworld of cyber society

The nature is the origin of being. This is one of the reason why mostly the imagine of nature are present in any web-page. Searching and navigating on network we often are like tourist or better virtual tourist which explore unreachable real beauty of the moment. On it’s own human being desire to upgrade the state of his evolution. In nowadays we apprehend the motion of our everyday life through the mass use of Artificial Intelligence device which are influence by the rule created on the parallel dimension the cyber-world. The cyber-world is a dimension where each of us becomes part of the cyber-society that indicate much faster and foster the opinion which afterward will be spread through the words or news in the real life time. Aware for the multidimensional evolution of the science, we can benefit from facilitated opportunities and at the same time to have much more possibilities for reflecting our actions in positive light.

Care Facilities for Older People With Long-Term Substance Use: Promising Practices From Sweden

The stigma of alcohol and long-term substance use is well-known and may be even greater for older people. This is a presentation on “wet” eldercare facilities, i.e. care settings designed for older people with long-term substance use problems, where abstinence is abandoned for well-being. Wet eldercare facilities exist in several European countries and the Swedish ones have a hybrid formal organization: They target people over 50 years, but are regarded as nursing homes and residents lease their own flats inside the setting, which makes it correct to describe residents as tenants. Guided by symbolic interactionism, the aim is to analyze how residents in wet eldercare facilities manage to view these places in a positive light. Forty-two residents of four facilities were interviewed, revealing how the hybrid status of these places enabled residents to frame their situation as being “in the right place”, but for different reasons. Some framed the place as a nursing home, others as an ordinary flat. Although wet eldercare facilities are undisputedly linked to stigma and the inability to become sober, the formal hybrid organization enabled residents to construct less stigmatized characterizations of the place and of themselves. The study suggests that it is an (often-neglected) gerontological responsibility to counter stigma and improve the sense of dignity for older people living in stigmatized settings. Based on promising practices in the Swedish system, the study therefore presents strategies that enable older people to ascribe positive characteristics to themselves and to the place where they live.

Understand Your Audiences

Contrary to what many researchers believe, lay audiences see scientists in a very positive light, meaning that they have a natural credibility. Researchers need to understand audiences in order to communicate effectively. Audiences are “need-to-knowers,” concentrating on topics that are particularly relevant to them. They also communicate within their own values, so scientists need to use communication strategies that take such personal values into account. Scientists also need to “pop their perceptual bubbles” that prevent them from understanding audiences. That is, they need to understand that audiences are not as engaged in science as they are and that their egos should not lead them to use technical terms when communicating with lay audiences.

The Obligatory Underwater Level: Posthuman Genealogy of Amphibian Human in Media

Will humankind ever be able to live underwater? To answer this question from the perspective of visual media studies, I analyze narrative and expressive means used for positive representation of underwater experiences in several examples of screen media. My examples are principally different by origin and yet united by their highly enjoyable effect of immersion into underwater worlds. My primary focus is on Amphibian Man (1928), a cult early science fiction novel by Alexandr Belyaev adapted for screen in 1962 in the USSR.I also explore its unintentionally close contemporary reproduction in The Shape of Water (2016), which even led to accusations in plagiarism. The third example is a contemporary independent video game ABZU by Giant Squid (2016), which replays the same theme of amphibian human existence in a positive light. These cases present a surprisingly rare view of a safe, friendly and interactive marine world, approached by the protagonist who can breathe underwater. I apply the posthumanist lens to find out that, surprisingly, aquatic cyborgs seem to be underrated by the queer thought (Haraway, 2015, 2016); I conclude that the model of ‘queer ecologies’ may become the needed development.

Portrayal of Women in Contemporary Nollywood Films: Isoken and King of Boys in Focus

This study investigates the portrayal of women in contemporary Nollywood films, using Isoken (2017) and King of Boys (2018) as case studies. The objective was to highlight the various ways in which women in the films are portrayed to viewers and ascertain whether contemporary Nollywood movies are an improvement on the issues of gender stereotypes and sexism which are hitherto prevalent in the industry. Anchored on the cultivation theory, the study adopted the qualitative content analysis method. Findings showed that women in the studied films are negatively portrayed in various ways and that these portrayals are, at best, parallel to the stereotypical ways in which women were portrayed in previous Nollywood movies. Taking cognizance of the fact that both films are directed by women, the researcher recommends that Nollywood female directors should look beyond the lenses of financial gains and set a pace with regards to changing the narrative and portraying Nigerian women in a positive light.

Adaptive and anti-adaptive neighbourhoods: Investigating the relationship between individual choice and systemic adaptability

Recent work on ‘anti-adaptive’ neighbourhoods has highlighted a number of common features, including scale of design, number of designers, mono-functionality, percentage of public space, planning rules and system of ownership. This article aims to provide a more general conceptual analysis of adaptability and anti-adaptability in terms of degrees of individual choice, where an individual’s choice set is understood as a combination of individual freedoms, both physical and normative, and of individual normative powers. Individual choice is constitutive of adaptability, and its ‘non-specific’ value helps to explain why adaptability is itself seen in a positive light. Thus, the article points to a potentially unifying explanatory factor that can help us to better understand the various common features of anti-adaptive neighbourhoods highlighted in the recent literature. The final part of the article discusses some of the implications of this reasoning for policy and design.

Bhakti in the Hymns of Alwars

Man is powered by the senses of skin, mouth, eyes, nose and ears. While depicting God in human form, the Alvars sang hymns in a way that emphasized the special nature of God and the use of human organs. Especially in Tirumal's Maniyalakam, Vayalaka is mentioned and he is spoken as a sweet speaker. In every incarnation of Tirumala his vayalaku is narrated. Although Vayalaku is meant to represent the Lordship of the Lord in a positive light, it is also shown to have the two properties of being the mouthpiece that feeds the milk objects which are meant to teach, hear and enjoy the virtues for the benefit of human beings. Eating and speaking are actions of the mouth. On the basis of these deeds the Alvars are distinguished as the mouthpiece of the Lord.

Immersive imaginative hedonism: Daydreaming as experiential ‘consumption’

Imaginative pleasure through daydreaming has been theorized to be important in understanding the experience of desire and as a factor in escalating consumption. However, there is a risk this underplays the range of potentially immersive and intense experiences of daydreaming, prior to and independent of the purchase or use of marketplace commodities. Drawing on in-depth interviews, participant diaries and projective techniques, this study brings empirical data to extant conceptual work on the consumer imagination to examine the variety of consequences of elaborate daydreaming for commodity acquisition. We suggest that it need not necessarily perpetuate or expand ‘actual’ consumption but may instead engender a longer, more reflective, pleasurable and meaningful experience from which purchase or acquisition may never materialize. Our study challenges accepted theories that associate daydreaming with consumerism or see it as an inevitable precursor to consumer disappointment, while shining a more positive light on the role of fantasizing in shaping consumers’ decisions.