Fessenden’s Worlds: Biosys is a short film inspired by the 1937 short story “Fessenden’s Worlds” by Edmond Hamilton. The first chapter situates the original story in science fiction film and media, and in wider folklore. Parallels and contrasts within the storylines of the original “Fessenden’s Worlds” and the Biosys short film are discussed. The second chapter examines all production techniques used to create Fessenden’s Worlds: Biosys. Aspects of filmmaking include storyboarding and previsualization research, production design and prop building, and filming for green screen compositing. The post-production software techniques used to create Fessenden’s Worlds: Biosys are discussed, including hard surface and organic 3D modeling in Maya; texturing in Substance Painter; rendering in Arnold; particle and geometric procedural visual effects using Trapcode Particular, Mir, and Shine; and motion graphics design for device displays in Adobe After Effects. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2021. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Das Thema dieser Ausgabe von Medienwelten – Imaging TU Dres­den – ist angelehnt an ein gleichnamiges Seminar von Ralf Voll­brecht im Sommersemester 2018, in dem Studie­ren­de image­bildende Maßnahmen der Technischen Universität Dres­den analy­sieren und aus medienpädagogischer Sicht einschätzen sollten. Die­­ses weite Untersuchungsfeld wurde dann beschränkt auf Image-Filme, wobei in dieser Medienwelten-Ausgabe nicht die ge­samte Fülle an Filmen einbezogen werden kann, die sich bei­spiels­weise auf dem YouTube-Kanal der TU Dresden finden lässt, son­dern nur einige derjenigen Filme diskutiert werden, die von der TU Dresden selbst in besonderer Weise herausgestellt werden.

Abstract This dissertation suggests that historical presentations should be understood as literary worlds. It studies how they are engaged with in the current media environment. The concept of a world offers a novel way of analysing how presentations are identified as being specifically historical presentations. In the case of the traditional written history, the identification of historical worlds is determined by contrasting their implied world-state at the present moment against the actual world’s world-state at the present moment with the help of counterfactual heuristics. This is done because the evidence of any e.g. past events can only be evaluated in the present as the past itself is inaccessible. The dissertation approaches the evaluation of history from a presentist point of view. It is argued that within the digital media environment, historical presentations are intuitively interpreted as incomplete presentations or as fragments of a larger whole. The functioning of historical presentations is examined as part of a large media network. History’s availability through a variety of media is then analysed through the concepts of transmedia and remediation. It is concluded that history is necessarily mediated and that the current media environment is changing how history is being engaged with. / Tiivistelmä Väitöskirja ehdottaa, että historiallisia esityksiä tulisi käsitellä kirjallisina maailmoina. Samalla tarkastellaan, kuinka historiallisia esityksiä kohdataan nykyisessä digitaalisessa mediaympäristössä. Maailmojen tarjoama käsitteellinen viitekehys antaa mahdollisuuden analysoida, kuinka historialliset esitykset tunnistetaan juuri historiallisiksi (eikä joksikin muuksi). Perinteisen kirjoitetussa muodossa esiintyvän historian tunnistamisen analyysin kohdalla esitetään, että historiallisten maailmojen implikoidun nykyhetken maailmantilaa verrataan kontrafaktuaalisen heuristiikan avulla aktuaalisen maailman nykyhetken maailmantilaan. Historiallisten väitteiden tueksi esitettävää todistusaineistoa on mahdollista arvioida vain nykyhetkessä, koska meillä ei ole pääsyä itse menneisyyteen. Näin ollen historiallisia maailmoja ei voida verrata suoraan aktuaaliseen menneisyyteen. Väitöskirja lähestyykin siis historian arviointia presentistisestä näkökulmasta. Väitöskirjassa esitetään myös näkemys, jonka mukaan nykyinen mediaympäristömme toimii siten, että se ohjaa meitä intuitiivisesti käsittelemään kaikkia historiallisia esityksiä epätäydellisinä sirpaleina, jotka näyttävät vain välähdyksen suuremmasta kokonaisuudesta. Historialliset esitykset nähdäänkin analyysissa osana laajempaa verkostoitunutta mediaa. Tämä laajennetaan transmedia-analyysiksi siitä, kuinka historiaa kohdataan ja levitetään populaarissa mediassa. Tämän pohjalta esitetään näkemys, jonka mukaan historia on välttämättä välittynyttä ja nykyinen mediaympäristö on muuttamassa suhdettamme historiallisiin esityksiin.

This study aimed to investigate how some teachers talk to students in grade 4-6 about fiction, more specifically, how the teachers in their reading aloud teaching enable students to develop imaginary worlds through conversation. The material was analyzed based on Langer’s (2005) theory about imaginary worlds. Two questions were formulated to answer the study’s aim: How do some teachers plan their conversations about fiction in reading aloud teaching? Moreover, how do teachers’ conversations about fiction vary in reading aloud teaching? The results showed that all teachers plan their conversations about fiction in the reading aloud teaching in different ways. Three of the teachers plan their conversations by reading the fictionin advance to get acquainted with the story and the characters. One teacher plans her conversations about fiction after reading aloud. The result also showed that all teachers vary their conversations about fiction in reading aloudin different ways, such as text extracts from chapters, work with illustrations, book conversations, and keeping the book secret from the students so that they can imagine what the characters and the environment can look like. Finally, the result showed that through the teachers’ conversations, the students were given opportunities to build imaginary worlds and an increased understanding of the text.

Die Wochenzeitschrift „DIE ZEIT“ erschien im Februar 2018 in der Ausgabe 8 mit einem auffälligen neongelben quadratischen Auf­kle­ber links oben auf der Titelseite, der eine Beilage annoncierte. Der Text (in roter, der Rest dann in schwarzer Schrift) lautete: „32 Seiten extra:“, es folgt in größerer Schrift „Schule & Erziehung“, darunter klein: „Eine ZEIT-Beilage über gute Bildung“. Was stellt DIE ZEIT sich in einem Extra unter „guter Bildung“ im Kontext von Schule und Erziehung vor?

In this thesis I examine the view on and relationship between nature and children that is communicated in picture books on climate change and the environment. Departing from the position that education in the Anthropocene must take a new direction in how humans view their own place in nature, I look more closely at the ideas that enter preschools in Sweden through six picture books recommended by the university library of Malmö for reading about climate and the environment with children in Early Years Education. My purpose is to analyze and understand the values that such books convey on nature and on the relationship between the human and more-than-human world. To serve this purpose I pose three research questions: In what way is nature portrayed in the books? Which role play children in relation to nature in the books? & How is the relation between humans and nature characterized in the books?I follow an ecocritical perspective and dip into ideas of the common worlds of children and nature. My methodological approach is a qualitative one, involving visual text analysis and the Nature in Culture matrix. By applying these theoretical and methodological tools I identify common ecocritical metaphors coined by Greg Garrard such as the apocalypse, pastoral, wilderness, dwelling, animals and earth, that together create an image of earth as fragile and nature as separated from humans in the examined picture books. Children are romanticized as the independent protectors of nature and saviors of the earth. While small details of entangled relations between nature and children suggest ideas of more common world perspectives, the overall values of the picture books reinforce an anthropocentric attitude towards nature. I conclude that the view of children reinstating harmony in nature places a problematic and romanticized responsibility on children in climate and environmental fiction of the Anthropocene.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This interpretive study makes explicit the cultural cognitive structures on which education professionals rely as they determine an elementary-aged child as having an emotional and behavioral disorder through a critical discourse analysis of teacher talk and participant structure analyses.

This research examines the effects of using 3D virtual shopping malls and shows the user interaction and experience in this type of virtual environments. Technology developments and the use of the Internet made users to expect more services, which help to improve the user's life. Using a 3D virtual environment and adding a shopping idea to it is considered as very interesting, especially if it reflects the real world in a virtual reality that make its users attached to it. Furthermore, the possibility of having an avatar to represent themselves in computer-mediated virtual environment help users to explore the virtual environment. Another advantage is that users have the possibility to invite friends and to navigate inside a 3D Virtual-shopping mall not alone but together, which gives the user the capability to socialise inside the mall. Besides, changing of the customer's profile and chatting with friends is supported, too. Moreover, the transformation process from a two-dimensional environment to a three-dimensional environment is considered to be convenient for both, customers and mall owners.   I have used phenomenology to investigate this new phenomenon. In addition the data was gathered by interviewing several participants from different educational levels as well as business owners of 3D virtual malls. The research will show the potential of using a 3D virtual shopping mall from the user's perspective as well as from the business' owners and having a 3D virtual shopping mall is not only considered entertaining, but also convenient.   As a future work I recommend to interview the merchants in this research to grasp this idea completely.

The aim of this paper is to provide a formulation of the modal cosmological argument for the existence of a necessary entity, that is more resistant to criticism than those hitherto formulated. The conclusion is that there exists a necessary entity powerful enough to causally sustain the world. It has only two substantial premises, which are very innocuous. The argument requires no assumption that contingent entities must have a cause, or even that they normally have a cause, or the impossibility of infinite regresses, or any particular theory of time, and works irrespectively of which modal framework is accepted.

Mit Transhumanismus, Migration und Gender werden in dieser Ausgabe von Medienwelten drei aktuelle gesellschaftliche Aspekte thematisiert, die im Rahmen von Filmanalysen sowie einer empirischen Rezeptionsstudie zu den Lieblingsfilmen und Lieblingshelden von Kindern bearbeitet werden.