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Key Issues in Immersion Education: Implications for Hong Kong

Angel M. Y. Lin and Evelyn Y. F. Man

in Bilingual Education: Southeast Asian Perspectives

In this chapter, key issues in immersion education are considered and their implications for Hong Kong discussed. These key issues regarding immersion education include the following frequently ... More

In this chapter, key issues in immersion education are considered and their implications for Hong Kong discussed. These key issues regarding immersion education include the following frequently asked critical questions: (1) Is immersion suitable for all, or only for the elite? What should be the criteria for the selection of students into immersion programmes? Or, should there be selection at all? (2) How are bridging and immersion-servicing programmes designed? And how effective are they? Is there a bridging role for the use of some L1 in immersion classrooms? If so, are there any clear guidelines on how and when L1 should be used? (3) What factors have to be taken into account when selecting between early and late immersion, and between total and partial immersion (mixed mode)? (4) Is immersion the only way to achieve a high level of L2 proficiency? Can L2 be effectively taught as a subject? Is teaching L2 as a separate subject necessarily a less effective alternative to immersion?Less

The Literary Designer Environments of Eighteenth-Century Jesuit Poetics

Karin Kukkonen

in Distributed Cognition in Enlightenment and Romantic Culture

This chapter revisits earlier accounts of distributed cognition in cultural environments and practices. It extends the notion of designer environment (i.e. spatial and procedural arrangements that ... More

This chapter revisits earlier accounts of distributed cognition in cultural environments and practices. It extends the notion of designer environment (i.e. spatial and procedural arrangements that amplify and scaffold cognition) beyond the usual focus on problem-solving and the task at hand. For outlining the complex capacities that come into play with the linguistic, cultural and literary contexts of literary designer environment, it draws on the critical and literary writings developed by Jesuits in eighteenth-century France. In particular, these literary designer environments enable fictional extensions of thought where immersive experience and abstract reflection can be combined. The article discusses individual literary texts and the larger intertextual net of literature in terms of the designer environment and suggests to broaden the perspectives from distributed cognition, the cognitive niche and scaffolded learning to include these.Less

Immersive spectatorship at the panorama and the aesthetics of the sublime

Hélène Ibata

in The challenge of the sublime: From Burke's Philosophical Enquiry to British Romantic art

Chapter 5 focuses on what appears to be one of the most conscious responses to the Burkean challenge: the invention of the panorama by the Irish-Scottish painter Robert Barker in the late 1780s. By ... More

Chapter 5 focuses on what appears to be one of the most conscious responses to the Burkean challenge: the invention of the panorama by the Irish-Scottish painter Robert Barker in the late 1780s. By literally removing the edges of representation, and immersing its viewers within an uninterrupted circular view, the panorama created a striking illusion of reality which, at least while the medium was still novel, caused unprecedented spectatorial thrills. While the medium could be linked to a tradition of illusion and immersion which predated the Enlightenment reflexion on the sublime, Barker clearly saw its relevance as a means to deny the limitations of painting. The chapter’s analyses of programmes, narratives and descriptions of panoramas by Robert Barker, Henry Aston Barker, Robert Ker Porter and Robert Burford suggest that this conception of the panorama as the most adequate pictorial vehicle of the sublime was to endure for several decades.Less

Digital Spectators in Augmented Realities

Andy Miah

in Sport 2.0: Transforming Sports for a Digital World

This chapter examines how spectator encounter digital technology in sport, which reveals a blurring of participation and spectating. It also proposes that spectating is changing through the ... More

This chapter examines how spectator encounter digital technology in sport, which reveals a blurring of participation and spectating. It also proposes that spectating is changing through the development of digital interactive experiences, such as urban screens, TV on demand, mobile technology, and social media, creating a new form of remote participation. The chapter also asks considers that the concept of spectator no longer makes sense in the context of an immersive viewing experience, where the witness is brought into the space of the activity, rather than simply occupying a third person perspective.Less

Introduction

Karen Throsby

in Immersion: Marathon Swimming, Embodiment and Identity

Opening with an autoethnographic extract detailing the end of the author’s English Channel swim, the chapter describes the sport of marathon swimming. It presents a working definition and a ... More

Opening with an autoethnographic extract detailing the end of the author’s English Channel swim, the chapter describes the sport of marathon swimming. It presents a working definition and a methodological account of the research on which the book is based. The chapter concludes with a summary of the chapters, highlighting the key arguments and concepts developed throughout the book.Less

Challenge, Threat, and Social Influence in Digital Immersive Virtual Environments

Jim Blascovich

in Social Emotions in Nature and Artifact

How do we know when people are immersed in virtual reality? Can such immersion be assessed implicitly? This chapter explores the integration of two independently developed theoretical models relevant ... More

How do we know when people are immersed in virtual reality? Can such immersion be assessed implicitly? This chapter explores the integration of two independently developed theoretical models relevant to social interaction within digital immersive virtual environments. The Biopsychosocial Model of Challenge and Threat, a motivational model based on demand-to-resource evaluations, is delineated including description of validated implicit cardiovascular indexes of the challenge/threat motivational states. The Threshold Model of Social Influence within Digital Virtual Environments is also elucidated. Finally, the value of their integration for drawing inferences of level of immersion and polarity of motivational states of individuals in digital virtual environments is argued and illustrated.Less

The World of IMAX 3-D

Ray Zone

in 3-D Revolution: The History of Modern Stereoscopic Cinema

The history of the IMAX Corporation and their use of 3D in large format 15/70mm is surveyed. The immersive nature of viewing the IMAX 3D film is discussed by a number of its creators.

Le Film surnaturel: Cocteau's Immersive Writing

Christophe Wall-Romana

in Cinepoetry: Imaginary Cinemas in French Poetry

Contrary to accepted ideas, Cocteau was not a poet who later turned to cinema: he was a cinepoet from the start. This chapter examines the experience of the film apparatus and embodied spectatorial ... More

Contrary to accepted ideas, Cocteau was not a poet who later turned to cinema: he was a cinepoet from the start. This chapter examines the experience of the film apparatus and embodied spectatorial immersion in his writings over the years 1913 to 1930. Even before he penned film criticism (ca. 1919), or discovered Chaplin (ca. 1916), Cocteau developed a detailed sensorial poetics of the cinema apparatus. The chapter focuses on specific aspects such as the cone of image projection overhead, the screen as a slice of the 3-D cone, off-screen as fantasmatic visual space, and visual immersion as correlated to being submerged underwater or to encountering the hard snowy surface of the screen. Two types of documentary were germinal for Cocteau: the footage rescued posthumously from the Scott expedition (ca. 1912) and the Williamson brothers’ early submarine documentaries (ca. 1913). The cinepoetics of Scott vs. Williamson is also conspicuous in his early novels such as Thomas The Impostor (1923).Less

Encuentro Dominicano: Creighton University’s Commitment to Education for Transformation

Tom Kelly

in Transforming Ourselves, Transforming the World: Justice in Jesuit Higher Education

This chapter explores how Encuentro Dominicano, Creighton University’s study abroad/community-based learning program in the Dominican Republic, has transformed participants’ understanding of life in ... More

This chapter explores how Encuentro Dominicano, Creighton University’s study abroad/community-based learning program in the Dominican Republic, has transformed participants’ understanding of life in a developing country. Students are housed just outside of Santiago at theCentro de Educación para Salud Integral (Center for Integral Health and Education the ILAC Mission). In their four months there, students take 12-18hours of coursework, immerse in local communities for 3 weeks, and engage in community-based learning twice a week in Santiago. The program is a mix between the traditional approach to study abroad (living together, studying and traveling) and an immersion component that puts them in direct and prolonged contact with marginal communities who survive on subsistence farming and occasional outside employment. The ILAC Mission has built relationships in these communities, called campos, for over 35 years. Creighton students thus have the opportunity and privilege of living in some of these communities in order to experience and understand life in a developing country in a unique way.Less

Teaching Social Analysis through Academic Immersion

Gary k. Perry and Madeline Lovell

in Transforming Ourselves, Transforming the World: Justice in Jesuit Higher Education

What does social justice look like in an academic immersion course? This chapter describes a course that addresses the need to link volunteer service with a strong anchoring in social analysis by ... More

What does social justice look like in an academic immersion course? This chapter describes a course that addresses the need to link volunteer service with a strong anchoring in social analysis by combining a 15-hour on-campus component and a ten-day immersion experience in New Orleans where students worked in a variety of non-profits. Classes held on campus entailed a rigorous social analysis of race and social class in New Orleans, environmental impacts, the role of social and political systems, the lived experience of New Orleanians, and next steps – to rebuild or not? In New Orleans students did policy analysis, community strategic planning, grant writing, and environmental restoration as part of their participatory action research projects.Less

Seizing Attention: Devices and Desires

Barbara Maria Stafford

in Ribbon of Darkness: Inferencing from the Shadowy Arts and Sciences

Whatever else mirrors, telescopes, microscopes, camera obscuras, vues d’optiques, magic lanterns, and “wondrous strange” phantasmagoria did, they took involuntary possession of our attention. ... More

Whatever else mirrors, telescopes, microscopes, camera obscuras, vues d’optiques, magic lanterns, and “wondrous strange” phantasmagoria did, they took involuntary possession of our attention. Formerly unimaginable aspects of the material world were suddenly seized and magically “given” to the viewer. These startling devices thus were not merely ocular, or even oracular, but epistemic. Their visceral as well as psychological effect was to target and overwhelm our perceptual and cognitive faculties with forceful and confusing—because wildly-enhanced or anamorphically-skewed—images. Baffling description, they illuminated, yes. But they also bedazzled, bedazed. This essay looks at what makes these Early-Modern devices relevant today. Affective neuroscience is showing that the foundations of human and animal emotions are not just lodged in a pleasing sympathetic or empathetic mirroring but in a readily surprised or shocked emotional infrastructure. What can this mean in an era when devices not only target specific areas of the brain for marketing purposes but promise total immersion?Less

From Oneiragogia to Full-Fledged Dreaming: The Immersive-Spatiotemporal-Hallucination Model of Dreaming

Jennifer M. Windt

in Dreaming: A Conceptual Framework for Philosophy of Mind and Empirical Research

Whereas chapters 7-10 are concerned with different types of dreams, Chapter 11 asks whether beneath this variability it is possible to identify something like a phenomenal core of dreaming that might ... More

Whereas chapters 7-10 are concerned with different types of dreams, Chapter 11 asks whether beneath this variability it is possible to identify something like a phenomenal core of dreaming that might hold the key towards a unified theoretical account. I propose a new working definition of dreams as immersive spatiotemporal hallucinations, according to which dreaming is inextricably connected to the phenomenology of selfhood and minimally involves a sense of spatiotemporal self-location. I propose that the investigation of spatiotemporal self-location can help identify and empirically ground the minimally sufficient conditions for phenomenal selfhood to arise, or for minimal phenomenal selfhood. I also introduce the new technical term oneiragogia, or experiences leading into sleep, and show how the conceptual framework proposed by the immersive-spatiotemporal-hallucination model of dreaming can be refined to describe the gradual transition from wakefulness, via sleep-onset imagery, to full-fledged dreams.Less

The Spaces of History: Museums, Interactivity, and Immersion

M. J. Rymsza-Pawlowska

in History Comes Alive: Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s

Museums of all kinds became more interactive and immersive. In two now exhibits, “Nation of Nations” and “1876,” the National Museum of American History placed viewers inside of historical milieus. ... More

Museums of all kinds became more interactive and immersive. In two now exhibits, “Nation of Nations” and “1876,” the National Museum of American History placed viewers inside of historical milieus. Meanwhile, exhibits in Philadelphia and Boston made use of technologies like computers and phone banks to personalize historical understanding and identification. Finally, living history sites like Plimoth Plantation and Colonial Williamsburg placed more emphasis on realism and authenticity in their presentations of the past.Less

The Hôtel de Beauharnais in Paris: Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the Dynamics of Stylistic Transformation

Caroline van Eck and Miguel John Versluys

in Housing the New Romans: Architectural Reception and Classical Style in the Modern World

The Hôtel de Beauharnais (1803–1806) in Paris was originally built by Germain Boffrand in 1713 for the Colbert family. It was redecorated by Jean Auguste Renard and others for Eugène de Beauharnais, ... More

The Hôtel de Beauharnais (1803–1806) in Paris was originally built by Germain Boffrand in 1713 for the Colbert family. It was redecorated by Jean Auguste Renard and others for Eugène de Beauharnais, Napoleon’s adopted son. It is one of the earliest monuments of Empire Style domestic architecture, combining Roman and Egyptian motifs. This analysis takes the concept of transformation and its related methods of adaptation and appropriation as its starting point to see what kinds of agency the Hôtel was intended to exercise, and how it functioned as immersive architecture within the poetics of eclecticism. In particular this paper examines the effect of the eighteenth-century theories of ornament by Julien-David Le Roy, Piranesi, and Jean-François Sobry.Less

A Contextual Model for Interreligious Learning

Marianne Farina and Robert W. McChesney

in Teaching Interreligious Encounters

The Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University (Berkeley) features an interreligious immersion program that offers students unique opportunities to study a religious tradition other than ... More

The Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University (Berkeley) features an interreligious immersion program that offers students unique opportunities to study a religious tradition other than their own in local settings. The program focuses on the sacred teachings and historical developments of a tradition, along with comparative spiritual practices and experiences of religious communities. Recent destinations include India, Indonesia, the Middle East, and Nepal. Central to program goals is the conviction that the experience is formative. Students develop a deeper understanding of religious traditions, interreligious dialogue, and the importance of understanding the complex realities of these traditions in actual settings. All of these spheres of learning impact the students’ studies and ministry training.Less

The Flow of Faith Online

Robert M. Geraci

in Virtually Sacred: Myth and Meaning in World of Warcraft and Second Life

This chapter offers a brief interpretation of Second Life and its history, culminating in three primary issues: the ways residents think about themselves and their avatars; the potential for ... More

This chapter offers a brief interpretation of Second Life and its history, culminating in three primary issues: the ways residents think about themselves and their avatars; the potential for residents to experience religious feelings online; and the construction and maintenance of social groups through the use of virtual objects and cyberspace connections. To explore these issues, the chapter follows debates in online identity (including that between immersion and augmentation) and applies actor-network theory to virtual world study. This chapter also explores some aspects of the author’s virtual ethnography in Second Life.Less