• Journal of the Korean BIBLIA Society for library and Information Science
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.5-27
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• 2019

This study analyzed the effects of comic book reading program on Korean proficiency and acculturation of youth with immigration background, by conducting a six-month reading program with five teenagers with immigration background. Ten comic books were selected from published by School Library Journal, based on the themes - that are related to the lives of youth with immigration background - and interests of participating teens. According to the literacy skills test conducted before and after the reading program, the participating teens' Korean proficiency has generally improved, particularly in the areas of interpretation and vocabulary. In terms of writing, grammatically incorrect sentences, phrases, and expressions have declined. Most participants showed stable adjustment to Korean culture, but one participant who felt still insecure of her ethnic identity deeply empathized with one of the characters of the books, and shared the difficulties of living as an outsider of a society. The participants of this research learned or rediscovered the joy of reading through this comic book reading program; at the end of the program, many of them expanded their interest in reading novels, books without any illustrations.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.50
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• pp.101-130
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• 2018

Since the advent of the Smart Devices, the smartphone has become a popular tool to view Webtoon. This phenomenon has caused the convergence of cutting-edge technologies and Webtoons in diverse forms, creating unique versions of Webtoons including, but not limited to Smart-toon, Effect-toon, Cut-toon, Dubbing-toon, Moving-toon, AR-toon, VR-toon, and Interaction-toon. By comparison to these rich diversities of Webtoons in the online industry, there is a lack of academic research on this topic. There are some papers which talk about the different types of multimedia technology conversion and its case presentation or the effectiveness and problems of visual effect, but the effects of these convergence technologies on comic readers' concentration and reading effectiveness have never been investigated so far. Therefore, this paper will discuss the unique method of immersive storytelling that is often used in comics and analyze each aspects of immersive method in technology-converged Webtoons along with its problems. Furthermore, this paper will analyze different aspects of "immersion" and interaction elements that can be found in the popular Interaction-toon, (Encountered). Through this, this paper discusses the positive influence of the interaction elements on comic readers' immersion level and its limitation. To classify the technology-converged Webtoons in terms of the immersion level, the Effect-toon sometimes interferes viewer's flow by using excessive use of multimedia effect, creating information overload. The Smart-toon which applied motions to each frame under horizontal mode of smartphones was a good try, but it hindered the readers' activeness and made it hard for the readers to be fully absorbed in the story. The VR-toon, which utilizes virtual reality gadgets to allow viewers to explore the world of Webtoon was also a nice try to overcome the limitation of vertical screens. However, it often caused dispersion of user's attention and reduced the users' immersion level. The Moving-toon which only emphasized the reading convenience also invaded readers' activeness and disturb users' concentration. On the other hand, the cartoonist Il-Kwon Ha applied high technologies such as face recognition technology, augmented reality techniques, 360-degree panorama technology, and haptic technology to his cartoon (Encountered). This allowed the readers to form a sense of closeness towards the cartoon characters which let the readers to identify themselves with the characters and interact with them. By this way, the readers can be fully immersed in the story. However, technology abuse, impractical production and hackneyed storylining often showed later in the story remains as its limitations.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.46
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• pp.85-106
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• 2017

With the media's shift into the digital era in the 2000s, comic book publishers attempted a transition into the new medium by establishing a distribution structure using internet networks. But that effort shied from escaping the parallel-page reading structure of traditional comics. On the other hand, webtoons are showing divers changes by redesigning the structure of traditional sequential art media; they tend to separate and allot spaces according to the vertical scroll reading method of the internet browser and include animations, sound effects and background music. This trend is also in accordance with the preferences of modern readers. Modern society has complicated social structures with the development of various media; the public is therefore exposed to different stimuli and shows characteristics of differentiated perceptions. In other words, webtoons display more relevant and entertaining characteristics by inserting sounds and using moving texts and characters in specific frames, while traditional comics require an appreciation of withdrawal and immersion like other published media. Motions in webtoons are partially applied for dramatic tension or to create an effective expression of action. For example, hand-drawn animation is adopted to express motions by dividing motion images into many layers. Sounds are also utilized, such as background music with episode-related lyrics, melodies, ambient sounds and motion-related sound effects. In addition, webtoons provide readers with new amusement by giving tactile stimuli via the vibration of a smart phone. As stated above, the vertical direction, time-based nature of animation motions and tactile stimuli used in webtoons are differentiated from published comics. However, webtoons' utilization of innovative techniques hasn't yet reached its full potential. In addition to the fact that the software used for webtoon effects is operationally complex, this is a transitional phenomenon since there is still a lack of technical understanding of animation and sound application amongst the general public. For example, a sound might be programmed to play when a specific frame scrolls into view on the monitor, but the frame may be scrolled faster or slower than the author intended; in this case, sound can end before or after a reader sees the whole image. The motion of each frame is also programmed to start in a similar fashion. Therefore, a reader's scroll speed is related to the motion's speed. For this reason, motions might miss the intended timing and be unnatural because they are played out of context. Also, finished sound effects can disturb the concentration of readers. These problems come from a shortage of continuity; to solve these, naturally activated consecutive sounds or animations, like the simple rotation of joints when a character moves, is required.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.707-715
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• 2015

With the development of computer technology, the multimedia mediums that allow for animated videos, conversational illustrations are increasingly receiving attention for materials for educational purposes. Accordingly, there is a need to research whether multimedia resources and material is more effective compared to traditional educational material and resources. This study aims to compare traditional English reading and writing learning methods with learning methods using educational multimedia mediums such as illustrations or animation. Students were divided into a experimental group and a control group, and during 6 months the groups were exposed to different educational resources and on the basis of student evaluation feedback and grades, a new approach to English education is offered.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.34
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• pp.81-104
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• 2014

Self-reflexivity means consciousness turning back on itself and breaks with art as illusionism and exposes their own factitiousness as textual construct. Self-reflexivity in media deals with the media's condition and process itself and tends to pull viewers out of the reality represented on screen by reminding them that is a media's construction or illusion on the screen. Representation aesthetics has been recognized with an essential theory of the art since Ancient Greek, but it has encountered crisis with the invention of the photography and the cinema in the early 1900s. The supreme transparency of the new media induced a new perspective for the representation aesthetics, which had dominated the art world. The art derived from the representation stood on the crossroad of changing direction. Modernism aesthetics wanted to search for the self-referentiality in order to the replace the past principal. This essay focuses on self-reflexivity in animation and their methodology. First, the change of representation aesthetics in visual arts will be discussed. Second, animations exposing their process of production and components will be analyzed, and lastly, intertextuality in animation will be dealt. I hope to provide the vision of the expanded animation media with this study.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.35
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• pp.29-65
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• 2014

Visual culture art education (VCAE) seems to be the new paradigm for art education after postmodernism. Getting beyond the traditional art education, VCAE has expanded its scope of interest to include the visual environment that surrounds our life, thus pushing the boundary of art education beyond the traditional fine arts to cover pop culture and visual art. VCAE shares the issues as well as a lot of elements of culture and art education and in fact serves as a major theoretic background for culture and art education, in that it pays attention to the sociocultural context of images and emphasizes visual literacy and constructionist learning. In this paper, I have reviewed the theoretical background and related issues of VCAE with a view to presenting a direction for animation education, which is gaining in importance coming into the Age of Digital Media. VCAE was born in the progressive cultural atmosphere from the 1970s and thereafter, and its gist consists in figuring out visual artifacts and their action in order to improve individual and social life. Yet, VCAE continues with its development according to the changing aspects of visual culture, and currently, it is expanding its scope of interest to cover the esthetic, experiential education in visual culture and construction of meaning through digital story-telling. In the visual environment of the Digital Age, animation is establishing itself as the center of the visual culture, being a form that goes beyond an art genre or technology to realize images throughout the visual culture. Also, VCAE, which has so far emphasized visual communication and critical reading of culture, would need to reflect the new aspects of the visual culture in digital animation across the entire gamut from experiencing to understanding and appreciating art education. In this paper, I emphasize on Cross-Curricula, social reconstruction, the expansion of animation education, interests in animation as a digital media, and animation literacy. A study of animation education from the perspective of VCAE will not only provide a theoretical basis for establishing animation education, but also enrich the content of VCAE, traditionally focused on critical text reading, and promote its contemporary and futuristic orientation.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.15 no.10
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• pp.209-220
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• 2010

In this study, a survey was carried out to investigate status of children's computer use and their ability by gender and age. The objects of the survey were kids at a day care center in Gimpo where students of the early childhood education department of K university had practical training for a month. 378 questionnaire were collected excepting those with insincere or inconsistent responses, and among them, According to the results of this study, girls use computers more often than boys for educational purposes such as learning how to read and write Korean language and numbers and foreign languages, and also learning music and arts. On the other hand, boys use computers more often than girls for entertainment like cartoon movies and games. In terms of computer using ability such as understanding instructions, manipulation of functions, drawing pictures, chatting and e-mail, internet shopping, homepage making, girls have higher ability than boys while boys are significantly superior to girls in the ability to play computer games. The analytical results show that application programs of the childhood education is desirable for boys to use for the sake of arousing the interest and for the game and for girls to use at the part of music and arts. According to ages, for 1-2 years children, they needs the AP with a delicate person having the computer knowledge, for 3-4 years children, they need AP with some little help, for 6-7 years, they need the AP to do themselves according to sex and age.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.255-264
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• 2019

Modern society has become a key factor in determining software competitiveness. Therefore, Korea has required more than 17 hours of software education per year in the actual course subject to the 2015 revised curriculum. In this paper, we analyzed the software related units in 6 kinds of textbooks of elementary school published based on '2015 revised curriculum' and tried to provide basic data for selection of textbooks related to software education in elementary school. As a result of the analysis, the 6 revised textbooks of 2015 appropriately reflected both 'understanding of software', 'procedural problem solving', 'contents of programming element and structure', and I was suggesting appropriate activities. Unit support materials use comics and illustrations to stimulate interest, supplement text, and deepen learning. Four kinds of textbooks provide additional information by presenting reading materials. However, in most textbooks, the proportion of learning using the appendix was low. Although it consists of units focused on knowledge understanding and practice, it can be a textbook that enhances students' interest and participation if they are made of software in daily life, problem solving by procedural thinking, and so on.