Animal Stories Research Articles

Emotive Narrative: Thinking and Writing Experimental Animation through Things’ Perspective

The purpose of this study is to explore the magical nature of things, to investigate nonhuman entities, and to study from the philosophy of Object-Oriented Ontology. Rethinking Paul Wells’ scripted artefact based on the ontography concept of Alien Phenomenology, specifically for the transition of objects from real world objects to cinematic objects, Animators go through the found or made object and object as narrative stages. To explore the potential of things, we engage creators in co-speculation through Evocative Object Cards activity that evokes experience. By thinking about the theme of the secret life of things and experimenting with writing from thing’s perspective, we can realize the emotive narrative of things. Using the concept of “human-object” experience entanglement, this study conducted an experimental animation writing workshop to stimulate the tactile memory of the creators, so that they can understand how objects reveal their unique agency in the animation, and then understand the satisfaction of the participants through semi-structured qualitative interviews. The research results show that this activity has a positive impact on the creators’ creative writing of animation scripts, which not only puts forward alternative views beyond the mainstream animation stories, but also enriches the audience’s viewing experience.

Playful Dramatizations – Doing German the Nordic Way

Nordic perspectives on playful learning have been defined by values and preconceptions associated with play in schooling. However, playful learning also emerges in specific ways as part of the patterns of relations that form classroom teaching and learning. Patterns can be understood as sociomaterial relationships in practice that create rhythms which become constitutive for specific teaching and learning practices (Sørensen, 2009). In the paper, I identify and trace ways in which specific patterns are created by multiple relationships that enable and hold together playful learning activities. With a focus on patterns of relations, I draw on performative understandings of playful learning which are holistically defined by complex sociomaterial relationships. The paper explores how these patterns enact Nordic ways of doing playful learning that are defined by both specific materialities, moods, and rhythms of doing language learning in secondary schooling. The paper builds on observations and interview data from a project in which teachers and students from three Danish schools experimented with playful learning in the school subjects English and German. In the project, experimentation and didactic development were enabled through action learning processes involving the participating teachers and the researcher. Experiments were scaffolded through use of the platform Drama Studio, where students can create animated stories using avatars in multimodal drama production. The paper focuses on a specific case in which the teaching of German became part of doing hygge as a seasonal mood in the classroom during an unusually long, four-hour German session. In the dynamics of enacting German as hygge, multiple relationships emerged that both held together and transcended the apparently delineated activity of doing German through Drama Studio.

Historical animal significance in Quranic stories

The animal is one of the important basic pillars of life in general, and its importance lies in particular for humans as it is one of the most important economic and service resources throughout the ages. The Holy Qur’an has made this importance very clear in its blessed texts. Therefore, this research dealt with animal stories in the Qur’anic text and their historical connotations to find out the reality of animals and their importance in ancient times through the Holy Qur’an and in accordance with Islamic theory.

Hearing Animals’ Stories: Interspecies Bond in Sanjeev Upreti’s Hansa

This paper analyzes Sanjeev Upreti’s Hansa (Duck), published in 2076 BS (2019 AD) from the perspective of Literary Animal Studies with a major objective of unveiling the author’s awareness of the exigency of an equitable and sustainable animal-human bond in the contemporary Anthropocene. The novel unfolds twin narratives in which one is a human protagonist and another a duck. In both narratives, stories of animals are foregrounded. Animal characters narrate their own stories that consist of their grievances of cruelties and indifference they face at the hand of humans. The human protagonist hears and understand these stories. It raises a question: why does he hear their stories? After analyzing the textual evidence through the theoretical perspective of Literary Animal Studies by focusing on Susan McHugh’s concept of animal narrative agency, the paper finds the answer that the human protagonist hears the animals’ stories because they underscore narrative agency. Unlike conventional roles of animals as metaphors and symbols for the making of human identity, these animals play an active role in resisting human exploitation against them. Finally, the paper claims that by offering narrative agency to animal characters, the author highlights the need of building an entangled interspecies bond among human and nonhuman animals. With this, the study expects to be useful for those readers and researchers interested in the field of Literary Animal Studies.

Animated Mathematics Learning Media on guru.tesonlineku.com using Plotagon Story and Lectora Inspire

This research aims to develop animated story-learning media that helps students improve their understanding of mathematical concepts. This research uses the ADDIE development (R&D) method, which consists of analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation stages. The sample research subjects consisted of 6 experts, two material, media, and language validator experts each, one teacher, 5 and 147 class VII students who assessed the practicality and effectiveness of the product being developed. Data was collected through expert validation, interviews with teachers, teacher and student response tests, and tests on students. At the same time, the N-Gain test was used to evaluate media effectiveness. Expert validation results show that the criteria are very valid, with an average score of 89%. The teacher and student response test showed an average score of 86%, which shows that the animated story media is practically used for mathematics learning. The N-Gain test of 67% shows that students' ability to understand mathematical concepts is increasing. Therefore, using animated stories to develop skills in understanding mathematical concepts is feasible, practical, and effective

We, the Animals: Studying Interspecies Relationships in Never Cry Wolf and Mia and the White Lion

Cinema has undergone multiple shifts in recent times and one of the major shifts is towards the eco cinema, where ecocritical theories, primarily focusing on interspecies relationships are highlighted. These theories also include the basic rights of animals, human’s relationship with animals and nature, and also reject anthropocentric beliefs. In one of his articles titled, “The Human Animal: An Ecocritical View of Animal Imagery in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World”, Erik Fredriksson argues that, “Ecocriticism begins to see human and non-human nature as interconnected and part of a whole. The distinction between human and animal is questioned and animal stories are examined to illuminate how we think about animals. The idea is also to promote empathy towards animals by highlighting kinship and to break up patterns of anthropocentric thinking.” In this paper, the focus will be on two films based on real-life events, Never Cry Wolf, based on Farley Mowat’s book, and Mia and the White Lion, which talks about the fate of lions in the hands of the canned hunters in South Africa, which will blur the line between reel and real. This paper will also highlight the interspecies interactions and relationships, more specifically, the unconventional interaction between the supposed ‘dangerous and ferocious’ wolves and lions and the two central characters, Tyler and Mia.

캐나다의 정체성과 캐나다 문학에 형상화된 야생동물

This paper examines the representation of wildlife in Marian Engel’s Bear as a departure from that of wildlife in realistic animal stories in Canada. Canada’s vast wilderness serves as a green space to escape civilization, to explore the self, and to provide solace and renewal. Engel’s Bear firmly stands in this tradition, and this book occupies a central place in Canadian identity and in the Canadian literary imagination. In Engel’s Bear, amazingly complex textual qualities can be noticed. This complex textual grain subverts the stable paradigm that human language can reflect the lives of wildlife. The diverse discourses found in the colonel’s library amplify the meaning of Lou’s bear to an overwhelming degree and make its meaning uncertain. The numerous images and stories about bears are juxtaposed and superimposed like a mosaic, making it difficult to determine the meaning of the bear that Lou encounters. Engel’s Bear is a remarkably successful retelling of a Canadian wildlife story that draws on Canadian artistic traditions with disturbing resonance.

Anthropomorphizing Animals: Foxhunting Stories and the Nature Faker Controversy

Abstract This paper uses a selection of foxhunting stories to explore the way in which anthropomorphized foxes were used to communicate pro-hunting messages to their mostly young readers. These justifications also appeared in nonfictional foxhunting sporting literature. Indeed, this literature included some of the same incredible anecdotes that also appeared in the work of nature writers at the turn of the twentieth century such as Charles G.D. Roberts and Ernest Thompson Seton working in a new sympathetic genre called the “animal story.” These writers found themselves under attack because naturalists like John Burroughs, and hunters, including President Theodore Roosevelt, found their stories to be inaccurate and anthropocentric. Roosevelt dubbed them the “nature fakers.” Foxhunting “histories” employed imaginative material and much anthropomorphism but were not attacked for doing so. This tends to indicate that anthropomorphisms were more acceptable when they were facilitating animal exploitation than when they were used to promote the perspective of nonhuman animals.

Improving First-Year English-Majored Students’ Speaking Skills through Using Digital Storytelling

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of digital storytelling on Vietnamese first-year English-majored students' English-speaking learning at a university in Vietnam. In this study, the students were asked to create English-dubbed animated stories with different topics relating to their speaking lessons by using the Movie Adventure application. Methods for data collection were speaking pre-and post-tests, questionnaires, and interviews. The findings revealed that using digital storytelling as a pedagogical tool for practicing English speaking benefited students' speaking ability. The findings also showed that engaging in the content of stories not only encouraged students' motivation but instilled their confidence to speak in English. The results of the given questionnaires and interviews showed that students responded positively to the implementation of digital storytelling, which facilitated learning by allowing learners to interact and collaborate in English. From the results gained, it was concluded that digital storytelling can be used to create a dynamic speaking learning environment that helps students participate actively in their English-speaking lessons during their learning time.

Disrupted cognitive and affective empathy network interactions in autistic children viewing social animation.

Empathy can be divided into two core components, cognitive empathy (CE) and affective empathy (AE), mediated by distinct neural networks. Deficient empathy is a central feature of autism spectrum conditions (ASCs), but it is unclear if this deficit results from disruption solely within empathy networks or from disrupted functional integration between CE and AE networks. To address this issue, we measured functional connectivity (FC) patterns both within and between empathy networks in autistic children (4-8 years, n = 31) and matched typically developing (TD) children (n = 26) using near-infrared spectroscopy during the presentation of an animated story evoking CE and AE. Empathy and social communication ability were also assessed using the Empathy Quotient/Systemizing Quotient (EQ/SQ) and Social Responsiveness Scale, respectively. The results showed that the FC in the AE network of autistic children did not differ from the TD group across conditions; however, the ASC group showed weaker FC in the CE network under the CE condition and weaker FC between networks when processing AE information, the latter of which was negatively correlated with EQ scores in ASC. The empathy defect in ASC may involve abnormal integration of CE and AE network activities under AE conditions.

Understanding children’s use of a mobile digital storytelling app

ABSTRACT Storytelling plays an important role in early childhood education. Advances in digital technology have allowed storytelling to expand into shared and collaborative experiences. While mobile apps have enabled children to engage in creating digital stories, there has been relatively limited research on how children create and engage in digital storytelling experiences in ‘in the wild’ mobile environments. In this study, we developed Animation Kit, a digital storytelling application that enables children to create and share short and simple animated stories. We conducted a thematic analysis on a random sample of 200 animations submitted to the app's gallery and conducted semi-structured interviews with three heavy users to gain insights into their creative appropriation, sharing, and collaboration behaviours. Our analysis revealed several interesting forms of appropriation of sharing and collaboration and strong demand for communication. Based on the insights gained through data analysis, we propose design implications for digital storytelling platforms, such as a nonlinear storytelling approach contests and an asset-sharing system that empowers users to share their creations with others and one that can maintain a history of user edits.

Fable Text Teaching Materials in Increasing Reading Interest of Elementary School Students

This research aims to overcome the low interest in reading in elementary school students. The effort made is to develop teaching materials in the form of reading fable texts which can increase students' interest in reading. Fable texts are animal stories that children really like. Teaching materials presented digitally are very popular with millennial children. It is hoped that the development of this teaching material can provide a solution to several problems with interest in reading in schools, namely students' low interest in reading, understanding the moral message of fable texts which is neglected, and limited reading books for fable texts in schools. This research uses the Research and Development (RnD) method which consists of preliminary studies, product development and trials. The results of expert validation show that the teaching materials developed meet the content validity criteria as teaching materials suitable for use in elementary schools. Based on the analysis of the trial results, it is known that the teaching materials are included in the Very Good (suitable) category in increasing elementary school students' interest in reading. Teachers can use moral value messages from fable texts as affective learning and character education for students. Digital teaching materials for fable texts developed can be used by schools to increase students' interest in reading, especially new students.

Storying itinerant childhoods: weaving a sense of belonging through collaborative art-making

ABSTRACT Storying itinerant childhoods explores belonging through intergenerational collaborative art-making and through a short film; an audio-visual family (auto)ethnography of our travels through North Eastern Australia in 2021. Bobi, a white Australian/British child, born on Bundjalung Country but no longer living there; where does she belong? Thinking-with the conversations that emerge as we draw and spend time as/in nature on Country, as well as Alys' basket weaving from natural materials gathered, develops a storying of our family towards tangled belongings. We share stories of animals, the environment, new homes and a new cousin being born. Researching with response-ability makes space for the more-than-human world, giving respect to Bobi’s 2-year-old voice, avoiding a divide between children and nature, towards a making of childhood nature. The picture-book, Baby Business by Jasmine Seymour has a clear message that ‘we are Country’, helping to highlight Indigenous Knowledges into this settler-colonial-academic paper by viewing the art-journal, the shells collected, the film, the journey and conversations as a relational-assemblage. Childhood now is affected by climate change, therefore we argue for a belonging-with the world as Country. This is the climatehood turn, enabling resilience and self-sufficiency within an ethic of mobility mirroring broader patterns of climate change.

Social robots as effective language tutors for children: empirical evidence from neuroscience

The aim of the current study was to investigate children's brain responses to robot-assisted language learning. EEG brain signals were collected from 41 Japanese children who learned French vocabularies in two groups; half of the children learned new words from a social robot that narrated a story in French using animations on a computer screen (Robot group) and the other half watched the same animated story on the screen but only with a voiceover narration and without the robot (Display group). To examine brain activation during the learning phase, we extracted EEG functional connectivity (FC) which is defined as the rhythmic synchronization of signals recorded from different brain areas. The results indicated significantly higher global synchronization of brain signals in the theta frequency band in the Robot group during the learning phase. Closer inspection of intra-hemispheric and inter-hemispheric connections revealed that children who learned a new language from the robot experienced a stronger theta-band EEG synchronization in inter-hemispheric connections, which has been previously associated with success in second language learning in the neuroscientific literature. Additionally, using a multiple linear regression analysis, it was found that theta-band FC and group assignment were significant predictors of children's language learning with the Robot group scoring higher in the post-interaction word recognition test. These findings provide novel neuroscientific evidence for the effectiveness of social robots as second language tutors for children.

Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America

Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America

Utopian Vision and Its Double: An Allegorical Portrait of Black Life in Hurston’s One-act Play Mr. Frog

Zora Neale Hurston was an anthropologist and a woman writer participating in the African American literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. A prolific and versatile writer, she wrote a number of plays, and, in particular, devoted herself to creating ‘black folk comedy’ as a form of ‘the new and the real Negro theatre’ that honestly showed the language and daily life of black people in South Florida. This study focuses on Herston’s one-act play Mr. Frog as an example of black folk comedy. A fable story, the short dramatic skit represents the utopian model of coexistence and symbiotic community by portraying the lives of animals. On the other hand, this utopia created on stage is a space that does not exist in reality, so in return, it indirectly suggests ‘other’ picture hidden behind the surface, namely, the portrait of contemporary black people in South Florida living the harsh reality of racism. In the play, the utopian vision is presented as ‘double’ and this writing strategy meets the nature and effects of an allegorical narrative deriving from the correlation of surface text and the hidden meaning or subtext. This study concludes that Mr. Frog, through the fable story of animals, dramatizes the ‘double’ of the utopian vision that diverges into the ideal community for coexistence and the reality of black life, thereby suggesting a model for allegorical playwriting.

The Competition Between Processing and Discourse-Pragmatic Factors in Children's and Adults' Production of Adverbial When-Clauses.

This is the first study to investigate the combined effects of processing-based factors (i.e., clause length and clause order) and discourse-pragmatic factors (i.e., information structure) on children's and adults' production of adverbial when-clauses. In a sentence repetition task, 16 three-year-old and 16 five-year-old children as well as 17 adults listened to and watched an animated story and then were asked to repeat what they had just heard and seen. Each story contained an adverbial when-clause and its main clause. The sentences were manipulated for their clause order, information structure, and clause length. Adults tended to change main-when clause orders to when-main in their repetitions, and they showed a strong preference for the given-new order of information. In contrast, 3-year-olds tended to change when-main clause orders to main-when, and they showed a preference for the new-given order of information. In addition, 3-year-olds tended to produce short-long clause orders irrespective of what they had heard, whereas adults produced both short-long and long-short orders in line with the input. In general, 5-year-olds were more adultlike in their production compared to 3-year-olds. Young children were strongly affected by processing-based factors in their production of complex sentences. They tended to order main and when-clauses in a way that requires less planning and processing load. However, they have not yet attained an adultlike sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic factors. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.24422635.

Co-producing a culturally sensitive storytelling intervention with Nepalese migrant workers

Abstract Background Labour migration is an increasingly important contributing factor to Nepal's economy; remittance from migrants abroad contribute to quarter of Nepal's gross domestic product. However, this income comes at a great cost; nearly 1,000 Nepalese migrant workers (NMWs) die every year in Gulf States and Malaysia. This interdisciplinary study informs the co-production of a culturally adaptive storytelling intervention to support the mental health and wellbeing of NMWs. Methods We focused on outgoing and returnee adult NMWs in the GCC countries. The study was conducted in Dhading district, Nepal and involved three different but interconnected phases; 1. a systematic review and a mixed methods study exploring health and wellbeing issues of NMWs (both studies already published, available online); 2. exploration, and analysis of Nepalese literature relevant to contemporary migration (n = 49); and 3. co-development of storytelling intervention working together with a co-production group (n = 12). Results Findings from phase one and two showed that NMWs suffer from various health and wellbeing issues (mental health, physical health including workplace hazard, abuse, and exploitation). Themes identified from the Nepalese literature centred around hopelessness, helplessness, and separation. Based on these findings, a culturally sensitive storytelling intervention was co-produced to support the mental health and wellbeing of NMWs in GCC countries. The intervention video includes an animated story centred around the struggles of an archetypal male migrant worker and their use of coping strategies for dealing with adversities. Conclusions Our study suggests that co-production of storytelling intervention provides shared spaces for migrant workers to engage, imagine and participate as communities. The process also helps to redistribute power and redress top-down modes of working that may undermine and devalue the stories of marginalised groups. Key messages • Co-production of storytelling intervention provides shared spaces to engage, imagine and participate as communities. • Co-production helps to redistribute power and redress top-down modes of working that may undermine and devalue the stories of marginalised groups.

애니메이션 스토리 창작을 위한 자기주도 학습과 생성형 AI 활용을 통한 교육 방식

In this study, the possibility of an animation story education method using AI was identified. First, as a theoretical background, we identified Keller's ARCS theory, animation story creation and education methods, self-directed learning, and generative AI as a learning motivation design model. Additionally, a new method of creating animation stories using generative AI was proposed. In the experiment, 40 subjects were divided into 20 groups of two each, and one person was randomly selected and divided into a control group and an experimental group to conduct a comparative experiment. And the results were verified with t-test. Based on Keller's ARCS theory, a learning motivation theory, through the concepts of attention and relevance, the number of instructors' instruction was used as the main parameter. The experimental results extracted valid results using AI for 12 groups and invalid results for 8 groups. The results of the study showed that the number of teachers' guidance in the traditional method, which was the comparison group, was high, and in the experimental group using AI, it was relatively low. Therefore, we proposed a new creation method that reduces teacher intervention by integrating animation story, teaching method, and AI use in the animation story creation education method, and secured its possibility.

An immersive simulation strategy to teach canine vaginal cytology: A multi-centre study.

Vaginal cytology (VC) is an essential technique for monitoring the bitch's estrus cycle. Currently, animal-free teaching methodologies have not been investigated for VC. Hence, this study aimed to evaluate an immersive simulation with a VC model and augmented reality tools. Students (n = 219) from four universities were enrolled, having learning stations with models for practising VC that provided immediate feedback on the technique. Augmented reality tools comprised QR codes that endorsed students to short videos of owners' avatars reporting the clinical reproductive story of the simulated animals and slides with QR codes leading to microscopy slide navigation videos. Proestrus, estrus, diestrus, anestrus and vaginitis were identified in the learning stations. The students' perceptions were evaluated through questionnaires assessing satisfaction, motivation, confidence, impact on learning and diagnostic accuracy. Before the immersive simulation, students had no experience with VC, being afraid of doing a VC with a live dog. Almost all the students considered practicing VC as essential and 94% reported that repeating the procedure (>2 times) was the most important parameter for learning. The simulation activity lasted ≈3 h and significantly improved the confidence of students, being less afraid of doing a VC in a live animal. Slide navigation videos improved the diagnostic accuracy of the estrus cycle stage, and students diagnosed the estrus and vaginitis cases more accurately. The immersive simulation strategy allowed repeated practice in a safe, motivated and standardized environment, being appraised by students as an essential strategy for learning VC.