TALLINNA LIKOOL Informaatika Instituut

Triinu Psik WHAT INTTERACTIVE MEDIA GIVES AND TAKES? Essee

Juhendaja: Raivo Kelomees

Tallinn 2011

Since the 19th century we are familiar with the term movie, since the beginning of the 20th century we started to talk about animations and since the 1990s we use the term new media although it has not been defined appropriately even till today. The one way media (television, radio) is still a part of our lives but as the years have gone by, we have taken bigger and bigger steps towards a community that provides us the comfortability to interact without having to exhaust ourselves with doing extra steps. After we got to know computers and how to use the Internet wisely, we began to wonder if there is a possibility to communicate with each other without steping away from the screen and keyboard and now we are using that opportunity to interact how we imagined to. As the interactive media has become a part of our daily lives, what does it give us and what does it take away?

The new media is defined as a genre that is still creating its shape and searching its place next to the traditional journalism, informatics and telecommunication (Pldoja, 2011), nonetheless it has already taken place in digital media. We can say that the digital media includes new media but not all new media outcomes are a part of digital media (Pldoja, 2011). The quality of new media is the active participation of the audience (Pldoja, 2011; Dinkla) and that includes the social aspect. The term 'social software' is used to define software that supports group interaction (Allen, 2004) and so it is a part of the new media providing social interaction between computer and Internet users. In this current of time, computer

technology brought the idea of interactivity into the form of media. The idea of interaction has emerged on every surface of contemporary life: art, media and society. (Rya, 2005.) This paper focuses on the media and society aspects and leaves the art behind.

After the art and science of Adult Education and its methods and approaches to the learner have become more popular, teachers have taken the advice to involve pupils into their learning process and lessons have become more interactive. One side of the interaction in classroom stands on the shoulder of the teacher it is to turn the teacher-based learning into student-based learning, so that the students have an opportunity to be involved in their own learning process. To give students the space to interact and get involved, they satisfy their needs to communicate and socialize. Some examples are groupworks, designing and/or leading some parts of the lesson, making cooperative projects etc. Of course the teacher has to trust the students not to take advantage of the situation if they are not used to this kind of approach. Though the main purpose of this kind of approach is to get the pupils to take the

responsibility for their own learning, the also interact with each other in classroom, evolve their social and problem solving skills etc and those are actually the basis of using interactive media.

The other side of interaction in classroom is the part that teachers can not fully manage nor control. Interactive technology is an ongoing expression of human desire. Its essential value would be found in understanding human beings, nature and cosmos. (Ryu, 2005.) If the teacher uses interactive media recources to illustrate lessons or a course in general. I have done so my fifth and sixth grade English students have their own virtual classroom (Edmodo.com) where I can give them homework or extra assignments, they can socialize with each other and with their teacher by writing comments or sending notes etc. As the version of e-School does not permit to send notices to my students, I chose another environment to stay more in touch with my students and so give them support via Internet as they use it anyway. Also they have an opportunity to ask for help if needed.

We use the media to interact but we lose the physical aspect of socializing and create a new version of our identity an anonymous one. This gives us the fake freedom to say what we want although we might not say it out loud when interacting in real life. Why is it so that we get a false impression, using interactive media, that our words are somehow meaningless but they tend to hurt much more than in reality...? It is a mystery that we lose our reality-check by only sitting behind the screen although we interact with real people.

Interactive media has become so self-evident that we do not even pay attention to what it gives or takes away from us. From one side of the story interactive media gives us the opportunity to interact with each other and teachers can support the learning process, but on the other hand we lose the control over the interaction process when it is transfered from reality to virtuality. Interactive media gives us the chance to lose our real identity as the one way media just adjusts our identity. As we learn informally, nonformally and formally, we need to start noticing how do we use those new media technologies and how they use us. In fact we need to train our socializing and interactive skills both in reality as well online.

ALLIKAD: Allen, C. (2004). Tracing the Evolution of Social Software. http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/10/tracing_the_evo.html

New Media Art. (2011). Wikipedia. [2011, detsember 6]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_media_art#Types Pldoja, H. (2011). levaade uusmeedia valdkonnast. [2011, detsember 6]. http://lemill.net/content/webpages/ulevaade-uusmeedia-valdkonnast/view

Ryu, S. (2005). Ritualizing interactive media: from motivation to activation. Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, 3, 105-123.