Interaction vs. Interactivity:

As I was studying this week, I stumbled across the difference between interaction versus interactivity.  It seems like these words are used interchangeably, but yet there is a difference to their meaning.

Interaction is the action between two or more objects

While

Interactivity is the degree of responsiveness to the interaction.

Basically interaction focuses on behaviors, while interactivity focuses on the technology systems. Good to know, right?

For class, we’ve been asked to share a fun and interactive media example.  One of my favourite sites (and it has been for awhile) is neave.com.  Paul Neave, a British interaction designer is the man behind this site.

I love this site.  It is all intuitively interactive.  Even from the moment a user arrives, the rollovers all have a beautiful sound attached to them- and that’s just the beginning!

The TV channel is the best part of the site. Basically the idea is that the channel feeds the user certain video clips, and when they get tired they can just click and move on. Amazing!

Other than the TV Channel, there are many other interactive mediums to play with, such as a dandelion you can blow by using your computer’s microphone, and an imagination area where you can move your cursor around to create waves of colour.  (Sample pictures here were taken from the imagination site.)

Along with showing off great interactive media, Neave’s site-, which is his personal playground/portfolio also demonstrates that there is an importance in creating and exhibiting your own work in addition to the stuff that gets you paid.

This week for school I’ve been challenged to list two websites, one that exhibits good design, and one that exhibits poor design in its layout.

Seeing that I spend a lot of time on the web, I got to thinking about layout and navigation.  For example, would this blog constitute a good layout of a website?  I’m not so sure.  Sure it follows a chronological pattern by scrolling down, but I wonder if it could be presented better.  I think the reason we all find it and other blog style websites “good”  is due to the fact that every web user is somewhat acquainted to reading blogs and navigating the structure within, as blogs themselves have developed over the years.

It’s a little bit tricky to find a site that makes good navigational sense, versus a site that can merely be navigated.

Both of these websites below are ones I visit often, www.etsy.com due to my love of crafts and supporting independent crafty people, and www.tc.edu/users/students, the website for my school.

Etsy.com:

This site is lovely to navigate. I’ve never been at a loss to find what I want on the site, and I’m given many different ways to browse (such as Colour, Fresh Shops, Local Shops, Just Listed items etc.)  I can utilize the search function to find new crafts or vintage clothing, which can change the search results completely, but it’s up to the user to choose.  Most of all I love their applications that make browsing fun.

Above is a screen shot from their Time Machine, which allows you to go through most recently posted items, and toss items that are of no interest to the side.

Here’s a screen shot from my favourite application, Colors (though the Geolocator does make for a close tie!)  Users are invited to click around the screen to find a colour that they’d like something in, and when clicked upon, search results in that very shade are brought up. Regardless of if you even need anything in that particular shade, it’s fun to click around and see the different shades come up, a la Jackson Pollock.

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tc.edu/users/students:

I recently needed to get a form to pay my tuition fees via wire transfer.  I got to this page and was momentarily overwhelmed.  I had no idea where I would even find a form that would help me out.  Eventually I figured it out (as you can see from the “clicked upon” link in the picture above), but the navigation through this site isn’t very fun, and takes time to learn the quirks.

The two sites are laid out very differently, but when it comes to finding specifics they both eventually lead to the correct information. It’s just that etsy.com does it in a way that is far more graceful and fun.

What are your favourite sites to navigate? What sites have you had a horrible experience with?

This week for class I’ve also been asked to list some features borrowed from traditional text reading and imagine how these features can be implemented in Hypertext or Hypermedia.

Some features that I really love about reading a traditional text versus my computer would be:

• Lighting conditions (no backlighting, but devices like the Kindle have taken care of that)
• Tactile feel of the book (I like how they feel and smell, and the weight they have when they’re in my bag.)
• Ability to imagine what’s happening in the book
• Lack of distractions (no randomly checking Facebook!)

Man, I sound like a fuddy-duddy! I hope someone else is willing to publicly declare that they like the smell/feel/weight of books.

That being said, I came up with three innovative ideas that I think could combine the best of both worlds with positive educational benefits.

1. Reading Backgrounds.

I really liked it when my grade 1 teacher read Beverly Cleary’s “Dear Mr. Henshaw” to us.  It was a great time for us to sit back and picture the story, but I wonder if it might be neat to somehow design an application that would have background images moving on a smartboard in a classroom (prompted from a website) and even background sounds that would add to the in-classroom “performance” of a teacher reading to a class.  Thus, an educator could create a captivating environment that would add additional senses (addition of visuals) to the learning experience.  It would be interesting to study to see if something like this would hinder or help the retention of knowledge.

2. iPad Textbooks

There’s nothing cooler than thinking about a textbook becoming a much more dynamic tool- that can change and update as the years go (no more reading 10 year old texts!), and would include videos instead of pictures that students can touch, to see certain theories exhibited in another way.  I would imagine that these texts would be particularly helpful for science classes, especially biology and physics.

3. Monitoring highlighting/notes in class texts.

There’s something to this idea, though it really is just fresh in my mind.  Imagine if students have the ability to read an electronic text and electronically highlight and make notes with a stylus.   Those notes would then get transferred and compiled into a report for the teacher with top keywords listed, so the teacher can target instruction to what the students are most interested in, or are having the hardest time understanding.

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Do you guys have any thoughts on this? What can we take that we love about traditional media, and add it to hypermedia? Do these applications of new technology take away from an educational experience, or add to it?

I know this isn’t the first time I’ve discussed digital natives on this blog, but it’s the topic this week for class.

A lot of people have written up on digital natives versus digital immigrants, but it was author Marc Prensky who coined the term in his essay Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants (2001). To put it simply, digital natives have always had the new technology (read: cell phones, video games, digital music, computers- you get the idea) while digital immigrants have come into these things later on in life and have had to learn it above and beyond the old ways they had of doing things.

The Mighty Car Phone

Whenever I’ve had to identify myself as one or the other, I’ve always swayed the way of the digital native, though I think I’ve come from a pretty neat little crux- where I got to experience life with both, having come into the world (early 80’s!) during the information age.  I remember when my Dad got his first car phone, and when we trashed our beta machine and record player, and got our first video camera and CD player.  I got to be around when people only bought products made of atoms (tangible items) to now, where many products are mere bits of information.  This makes me wonder though- am I a TRUE digital native?  I’m not like my pal Clover- who surfs the web with ease at age 4, but if I was given the web at her age, there’d be no doubt that I’d be on it.

I think if I were in the category of “digital immigrant” I’d be kind of resentful of the term.  You can’t choose when you’re born, but you can choose your attitude to new developments in technology.  In this article (Wikipedia: Digital Natives), this struck me as a good thing to think about when discussing digital natives.

Eager Adopter?

As Dr. Ofer Zur and Azzia Zur discuss (2009), not all digital immigrants are technologically inept;they fall into the categories of Avoiders, Reluctant Adopters and Eager Adopters. Avoiders may only have a land line, and no email account. Reluctant Adopters see that technology is necessary to their lives, but they don’t have a knack for it and often don’t like it. Eager Adopters have enthusiasm and (sometimes) talent for technology that puts them close to on par with Digital Natives. Baby Boomers who are thriving online are Eager Adopters.

My pals Rob and Ted would be considered digital immigrants (I hope they don’t think I’m calling them old!) but they’re more with it, and into technology than many of my digital native friends.  They’re the ones telling me about new things, and not the other way around.

Which just goes to show it is all in the attitude. If I ever find myself scared of technology, or reluctant to learn something new, then I know I’m done for.  I can’t imagine a life like that- but there are nursing homes full of these people!  Imagine being a senior that’s an eager adopter of technology, having to deal with all these fuddy duddy peers!

Oh mercy.

One other thing I think about (while we’re on the topic), is children in third world countries. While they could be considered digital natives due to the time they were born- their approach to technology once they finally encounter it would likely be how a digital immigrant would approach it.  That’s one thing I’d like to look further into, and one thing that I could probably write a whole essay on.

In Prensky’s article, he states that today’s students are no longer the people the education system was designed to teach (he also has a new book coming out about it!) and believes that the brains of digital natives may be differently structured (though he doesn’t cite how in his essay- so I hope he explains it in the new book!) He states that digital natives like to get their information really fast, they digitally multitask, and love instant gratification and frequent rewards (there are people that don’t?!)

Instant Gratification: Kittens on a Slide!

At any rate, Prensky summarizes that digital immigrants present information in a very boring way that the digital natives are just not into, and that with a little imagination this could be remedied.  (This is a huge part of why I do what I do.)  He encourages instructors- even those of the direst subject matter to think outside the box to apply digital native methodologies to all subjects.

Uhhh… obviously!

I’m wishing this article had come out in grade 7 and I could have given it to my teacher and been like, “listennn… it’s not me. It’s you.”

I would have gotten suspended, but I would have done it anyhow- and it also makes me wonder if much of the rise in attention deficit diagnoses in children could be because of the digital native/immigrant disconnect (I’m sure I could write another paper on this as well!)

Like any good chef will tell you, it’s all in the presentation.  If kids can remember the entire discography of Justin Bieber they should also have the cognitive capacity to recount all the countries in Africa, but unless this info is meaningfully rehearsed and has some semblance of importance to these kids- it won’t be remembered.

Was this not the case for digital immigrants?

The raison d’etre for us as educators via technology is to present information in a way that it can be meaningfully processed and matter to the kids consuming it.  Papers on digital natives and digital immigrants aside- it really is that simple.

Hey!

Check out my new site- it’s nice eh? Now there’s victorian wallpaper at the sides that is tinted magenta, there’s a new picture of me, and it’s a bit more easy to navigate.

Special thanks to Mark for making this all possible!

It’s a brand new kristenmcgregor.com!

Just great. This is on par with so much that I’m doing these days.

“I don’t want to be popular, because being popular means having to give up a part of who you are, and I’m not ready to do that.”
- an 11 year old student of mine.

I wish I could have had her as a friend when I was 11, and trying to be popular.