Definition of Terms Interactivity

The communication process that takes place between humans and computer software.

Interactive Media

A method of communication in which the program's outputs depend on the user's inputs, and the user's inputs
in turn affect the program's outputs.

Media Platform

Is a service, site or method that delivers media to an audience.

Social media

Websites or online services where users (actual people) are the creators and consumers of the content, and
where social interactions (commenting, liking, posting, talking) are the main features of content.

Virtual Reality

Computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in a

seemingly real or physical way by a person using special electronic equipment such as a helmet with a screen
inside or gloves fitted with censors.

Lesson
Manipulative Media and
17 Information

What is It

MANIPULATIVE/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Interactive Media is a method of communication in which the program's

outputs depend on the user's inputs, and the user's inputs in turn affect the
program's outputs. Interactive media engage the user and interact with him or
her in a way that non-interactive media do not. Websites and video games are
two common types of interactive media. Interactive websites refer to an
Internet page that uses different kinds of software to create an interaction
between users and its content.

Interactive Media
Source: http://prime-uk.com/interactive-media/

Interactivity refers to the communication process that takes place between

humans and computer software. The most constant form of interactivity is
typically found in games, which need a continuous form of interactivity with the
gamer. Database applications and other financial, engineering and trading
applications are also typically very interactive. (Definition taken from
Investopedia).
One area where interactivity is most useful is in online training. Interactivities
in this area allow learners to interact with the course in terms of action
and/or thinking.
Interactive media platform includes the following:

a software application developed specifically for use on

Mobile apps small, wireless computing devices such as smart phones
and tablets, rather than desktop or laptop computers.
a television display technology that enables a three-
3D TV dimensional effect, so that viewers perceive that an
image has depth as well as height and width, similar to
objects
in the real world.
a game played by electronically manipulating images
Video games produced by a computer program on a television screen or
(multi-player) other display screen. Multiplayer games allow two
or more players to play with one another or play together.
a game in which players assume the roles of characters
Role-playing games in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for
(RPG) acting out these roles within a narrative, either through
literal acting or through a process of structured decision-
making
or character development
Massively any story-driven online video game in which a player,
Multiplayer Online taking on the persona of a character in a virtual or fantasy
Role-Playing Game world, interacts with a large number of other players.
(MMORPG)

Interactive websites
(pools, surveys,
exam)
the computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional
Virtual reality and image or environment that can be interacted with in a
immersive seemingly real or physical way by a person using special
environments electronic equipment, such as a helmet with a screen
inside or gloves fitted with sensors.
 websites or online services where users (actual people) are
Social media the creators and
consumers of the content, and where social interactions
(commenting, liking, posting, talking) are the main
features of content. Examples are Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, Snapchat, Vine, etc.

Ways of interacting with the Internet:

compare prices; compare features of similar items; add to cart;

a. Online shopping choose payment type; track delivery; get advice from experts;
search products; check local availability; get
product recommendations.
b. Online gaming choose a game; play with computer; play with others;
choose a level, in-game, customization, etc.
c. Online classes interact with content; interact with instructors; interact
with classmates.
d. Chat group chat; search groups; search friends; translate language.

e. News and exchange information; give reaction; news on demand;

information monitor views.
f. Videos choose your own adventure; get multimedia content;
experience game elements.

Types of interactivity and their purposes:

a. Click on images

b. Hotspot - a special region to act as a trigger to another web page. The hotspot
could be a circle, triangle, rectangle or polygon.

c. Rollover - an image or portion of an image that changes in appearance when

the mouse cursor moves over it.

d. Tabs - clicking on them displays a relevant content with an appropriate graphic.

e. Timeline - a menu slide that branches to different events.

f. Numbers/processes - the number of clicks and the time spent in an interactive

function provide data points.

g. Slideshow - non-linear interactive slideshow where the pathway through the

show is determined by the user's interaction with it.

h. Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

 i. Flip cards - a card that when clicked flips to display a description and other
information.

Emerging interactive media:

Interactive television also known as ITV or iTV. A form of media convergence,

adding data services to traditional television technology. Throughout its history,
these have included on-demand delivery of content, as well as new uses such as
online shopping, banking, and so forth. ITV enables the viewer to issue
commands and give feedback information through an electronic device called a
setup box. The viewer can select which program or movie to watch, at what time,
and can place orders in response to commercials. New setup boxes also allow
access to email and e-commerce applications via the internet.

Furthermore, another concept related to Interactive media is the Manipulative Media. In an

article of Manipulative Media by Tabura, M., Robles, R., et al. The following concepts were
discussed.

WHAT IS MANIPULATIVE MEDIA?

Source: http://miltrainingdollydhang.weebly.com/manipulative-
media-and-information.html

MANIPULATIVE MEDIA
—Manipulatives in the context of education are physical tools of teaching,
engaging students visually and physically with objects such as coins, blocks,
puzzles, markers, etc.

—The use of manipulatives is constructivist because students are actively

engaged in discovery during the learning process. A teacher provides the
materials along with a basic direction, but students should be allowed to
explore the materials and ask questions before and during the lesson”
TYPES OF MANIPULATIVE MEDIA
TRADITIONAL MANIPULATIVE MEDIA
—Traditional Manipulative Media is actually being used in certain schools,
wherein they use different materials that the students can use to have a
hands-on experience regarding the lesson.

VIRTUAL AND DIGITAL MANIPULATIVE MEDIA

—With the dawn of the digital age, education should keep up with the interests
of the 21st century learners. And in order to do so, education have been merged
with technology in such a way that students can learn more with the aid of
these devices.

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF MANIPULATIVE

MEDIA TRADITIONAL MANIPULATIVE MEDIA

ADVANTAGE DISADVANTAGE
-Hands on learning -Not available for everyone
-Increase confidence -Dis interest on discussion
& motivation for learning type learning
-Opportunity for collaboration -Expensive
-Multisensory
-Variation in learning

VIRTUAL AND DIGITAL MANIPULATIVE MEDIA

ADVANTAGE DISADVANTAGE
-Hands on learning -Not available for everyone
-Increase confidence -Distraction
& motivation for learning -Dependence on them
-Plenty of resources
-Engaging
-Attention grabber
-Flexible and easy access
-No clean up needed
MANIPULATIVE INFORMATION AND MEDIA

Manipulative media may be loosely defined as any material, program, or application that people use to
formulate new information to aid learning through the use, analysis, evaluation, and production of interactive
and hands-on media. Your mobile applications that may serve as educational tools may be considered to be
manipulative because of the degree of manipulation or control you have over your use and access of these tools.

Defining Interactive Media

Wiki site Investopedia defined interactive media as a "method of communication in which the
program's outputs depend on the user's inputs, and the user's inputs in turn affect the program's outputs." The
user interacts with the media through engagement and manipulation of the media technology. Some examples
include Web sites and video games. Although motion and visual media may not generally be considered
interactive, they may become one when they require a certain extent of audience participation.

Social media is a kind of interactive media because they use graphics and text that allow sharing of
information between users, online conversing or chatting, and playing online or Web-based games. Video
games are also interactive media because the participants or players are able to control and "respond to visual
and sound cues on the screen that are generated by a computer program."

Interactivity is the foremost attribute of manipulative media because the main goal is for a user or
learner like you to have high involvement in your use of the applications. According to software developer OM
Technologies, Web and mobile applications aid students and educational institutions to have a more expansive
and integrative learning experience because learning management systems enable a teacher-supported
learning environment. Manipulative media in the form of applications provide a compact, online learning
platform.

There is also open-source software that are developed to cater to needs for creative and modern
educational needs that utilize the resources from the Internet. This is a testament of how the Internet, coupled
with technologies that have risen in recent times such as tablets and smartphones, has redefined your learning
experience. These advancements have been hoped by their developers to enhance your engagement with
learning via the tools that they offer. Some software developers exhaustively come up with applications that
you may access with ease and for free. Also, manipulative media are slowly becoming integrated in classroom
activities because of the changing habit and behavior of learners like you. You have become multiscreen users,
and thus, are very well acquainted with gadgets.

You may find yourself enjoying the use of manipulative media especially when it is used for activities
that students like you are normally not fond of such as tests and other study related chores. One of the goals of
manipulative media is to increase your receptiveness to such tools. As mentioned in the previous unit, mobile
learning applications, or m-learning, are facilitated using portable devices like tablets and smartphones
(Leyden, 2015).

Mobile learning is slowly gaining popularity because the generation living in the 21st century are more
attuned than ever to media technology. The seemingly backward state of information and communication
technology and infrastructure in some places in the world does not seem to become a hindrance as long as the
mobile phone technology is booming.

Leyden (2015) reported that there are about 7 billion mobile phones in the world which is almost as
many inhabitants on Earth. Should this come as a surprise? Not quite, since you may actually own more than
one mobile phone, which validates this statistic. Leyden also added that in Lahore, Pakistan, there is a UNESCO-
sponsored project on the use of text messaging to distribute educational content in areas that the educational
system cannot seem to reach. The project is a testament of how communication is vital in promoting certain
literacy skills that are impeded by the lack of some other means or infrastructures that the conventional school
system normally provides. Although mobile learning is not meant to replace the conventional way of learning, it
augments areas of learning through use of computers and virtual classes (Leyden,2015).

Mobile learning apps are extremely helpful in certain situations, for example, when you need to check a fact or consume small
amounts of information at a given time. Aboul three in four (74%) teens aged 12-17 say they access the Internet on cell phones, tablets,
and other mobile devices. However, if one were to choose between a computer and a mobile phone for researching a subject in-depth,
mobile learning probably wouldn't be your best option. The important thing is, therefore, to use the appropriate means at the right time
to optimize the way in which you learn.

—Andrea Leyden

Mobile learning lets you maximize the technology at your fingertips. For instance, you may effectively
use images on your smartphone by taking snapshots of your note (using the screen-grab capability of your
phone). Doing so will save you time to go to a library or money to reproduce hardcopies of notes. As for audio-
visual elements, you can access educational videos from video- sharing platforms or from podcasts. Your
smartphones or tablets can let you access digital notes and information which save you the time and effort to
access the same information from traditional media modalities.

There are mobile applications such as translators, dictionaries, and flashcard decks that serve as
learning aids. There are m-learning and e-learning tools downloadable for free or for an affordable and
reasonable cost which you can make use as go-to information sources. All these tools enhance independent
learning, allowing you, as learners, more leeway to choose your sources of information and when and how you
will utilize these sources.

The Googling Phenomenon as Manipulative Media

Googling, through common usage, is understood by Internet users as looking for information about
something using Google.com. The adoption of this Internet vocabulary indicates the ubiquity of the use of the
Web search engine Google considered to be "the most successful" repository of vast source materials on almost
any information sought online. Various literatures discussed how the number of Philippine Internet users has
risen exponentially.

Known then as BackRub, the Web search engine Google was a project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in
1996 who wanted to "revolutionize search by using links as the primary ranking metric in order to improve
relevancy" (Clark, 2015). Both creators, employing a so-called "theory of citation notation," believed that each
site that linked to another site was essentially expressing their confidence in the content offered within its
pages" and that "[t]hese links served as votes, and the anchor text within the link served as a way to index sites
based on what others were issuing these votes for" (Clark, 2015).

Google was able to serve over 10 000 queries a day and quickly gained a reputation as a trustworthy
source of information during its infancy. The site eventually managed to cater to a larger number of queries
every day and thus was forced to move into its Googleplex headquarters in California. Google became
renowned for its service to its users as can be gleaned from the continued growth and improvement of its
reputation "for effectiveness, relevance, speed, and reliability." The search engine boasting of more than 50%
share of the total search market owed to the fact that many of the search results for numerous search engines
on the Web come from Google (History of Google: From Garage-based Business to #I Search Engine).

Google has become all-important to both search engines and search engine optimization specialists alike. The other search
engines have a tendency to mimic any algorithmic changes made by Google. Likewise, search engine optimization specialists’ continually
study the changes as well in order to provide their clients with the best search engine rankings.

- History of Google: From Garage-based Business to #1 Search Engine

Google searching (or Googling) is one of the many activities over the Internet that people engage in.
According to Clark (2015), Google is by far the most relevant and most used search engine in the world because
of its adaptability and user-friendliness. He said that "when new technologies —such as social media — start to
play an active role in our conversations, Google finds a way to integrate them into the algorithm to improve
relevancy [and when] search habits change, Google changes with them". He also claimed that there are various
reasons that make Google the search engine of choice among online users. Like any other search engine, Google
is able to "deliver results based on how well queries matched up with web pages". But Google is set apart due to
its capacity to understand the intent behind the search (known as semantic search where a user encounters
several other associated/related terms when one types in the search words/terms).

Google is also able to provide location-based search as it utilizes a user's location to deliver customized
results for his or her searches (Clark, 2015). Google has also improved the mobile Internet search experience
by providing a mobile algorithm capable of hiding Web sites that do not display properly on mobile devices.

Bing and Google have both largely invested in utilizing their massive databases of information in order to provide quick bites
of information for specific keywords and phrases. In order to improve user experience, both are attempting to eliminate additional steps
in which the user must take to find information, and instead relying on knowledge graph technology. For example, movies, celebrity
names, or location-related queries now feature information about the query at the top of the page. For quick searches, this may save you
the additional steps of having to dig deeper through the results or visit multiple sites to find the information. This has big implications
on mobile, as well as voice search (such as Siri or Google Now) as most searches are quick attempts to retrieve information as opposed
to exhaustive searches for research.

—Bryan Clark

Google is constantly competing with other search engines despite its dominance in the Web search
market. One of the aspects that all search engines strive to achieve is efficient and effective delivery of highly
relevant search results for queries.

The googling experience is facilitated by what Google calls the PageRank algorithm where a PageRank
score is assigned to each of the billions of Web pages that a user looks up in Google. According to Wills (2006),
the "algorithm models the behavior of an idealized random Web surfer [where this] Internet user randomly
chooses a webpage to view from the listing of available webpages, [then] randomly selects a link from that
webpage to another webpage [and] continues the process of selecting links at random from successive
webpages until deciding to move to another webpage by some means other than selecting a link."

Wills (2006) further explained that "the choice of which webpage to visit next does not depend on the
previously visited webpages, and the idealized Web surfer never grows tired of visiting webpages; thus, the
PageRank score of a webpage represents the probability that a random Web surfer chooses to view the
webpage." In order for a Web site to climb in Google's search hit list, it employs three rating criteria: 1) the
contents of the Web site; 2) the number of links that lead to the Web site; and 3) the good image names and
captions.

Internet Use as Manipulative Media

In the Philippines, Internet usage is reported to be at its peak and is continuously growing every year
despite the poor Internet connection speed (due to the technology available). The Internet and Mobile
Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP) claims that close to half of the Philippine population (about
two-thirds of which is below 30 years old) is now online whereby "the number of Philippine Internet users as
of mid-2014 is now at 38 million out of a population of 100 million... and may still be expected to increase
dramatically because of the falling cost of both Internet access and devices"(Montenegro, 2014).

According to an article by Baldivia (2013), "[t]here are over 33 million active Internet users in the
Philippines [to date]; that means 3.5 out of 10 Filipinos are online" and that in the Southeast Asian region alone,
"the Philippines was named the fastest growing Internet audience. "As of 2015, the number of Internet users in
the Philippines kept growing (see Figure
16.1).

In an article by Kemp (2015), it

was found through research that around
four hours and 25 minutes per day is
spent by the average Internet user "with
Southeast Asians registering the highest
average daily use."GlobalWebIndex
showed that "Filipino Internet users
spend more than 6 hours per day using
the net..." Figure 16.2 illustrates the
average time spent per day by Internet
users by country.

Fig. 16.1. Internet Use in the Philippines

in 2015
Source: http://wearesocial.net/blog/2015/01/digital-social-mobile-worldwide-2015)

Fig. 16.2. Average time spent per day by Internet users by country

Source: http://wearesocial.net/blog/2015/01/digital-social-mobile-worldwide-2015/

Manipulative media are products of continuous media convergence and they are incorporated in education to
stimulate students to have a higher engagement and involvement in studying because the bulk of your lives is
spent with constantly being connected.