Interactivity

Learning objectives

When you have completed this session, you should be able to

• define term "interactivity",
• list the advanteges of interactivity.

Why is it useful?

From the very beginning computers offer the possibility for playing. Computers Educational movies – having effects on several senses – with the power of audio and video forces make all new knowledge more adventures. However multimedia [tmoodle???] means a real break through in this area.
Films are able to keep interest permanently and may mean a real adventure but never can “involve” students in the subject as much as a special tool which can communicate and react to some interactions. Multimedia may give the answer to the everlasting problems of mentoring and teaching such as:

1. How to arouse the interest of students for the importance of new knowledge?
2. How can permanent attention be kept?
3. How to persuade students to practice?

Even the first teaching programs (in the 70s and 80s) could captivate teachers (as developers) and students as well although they could only ask questions, react to the students’ answers, calculate and store the performances in percents on monochrome monitors.
Nowadays’ software technology offers practically unlimited possibilities. Fantasy and creativity is the only limit for the possibilities. This might be just as dangerous as advantageous. No wonder that in spite of the technological features very few good quality educational materials are created.
Synchronizing interactivity with educational goals is one of the most difficult tasks a teacher can face. Besides pedagogical talents there is a need of sensitivity for good balancing, artistic vision, musical talent, the knowledge of ergonomic and engineering rules, and a great professional preparedness in order to have a product created which really fits for the purpose.
Despite of this I recommend to all my teacher collages to participate in developments is there is a chance. The development itself is a great adventure and the feedback is an enormous joy.

Programming
Interactivity can be integrated in the electronic syllabus by programming. Graphic elements, audio and video material can be integrated with no limitation with today’s software developing systems. Developing tools support interactive solutions with hundreds of commands installed in advance. Authoring systems have their own command kits for programming tests, simulations, practicing tasks. Such program languages are Lingo in Macromedia Director or the Flash script language, ActionScript, for educational materials published on the Internet. Most teachers (including many IT teachers) think that getting acquainted with these tools is impossible because programming is another profession. This is not even necessary. However, developing a knowledge that allows to become familiar with the possibilities would be worthy for every teacher. Teachers can participate as members of such developing teams when designing multimedia lessons only this way. Precisely this sort of abstention is the reason for not having really good multimedia syllabuses.
In this lesson I try to present the possibilities with numerous examples. I think by looking at these examples my collages are going to realize they are not allowed to be left out of this thing!

Simple Flash program: a computer variety of an old but very fine little game.

Only the pictures must be changed and it can be used for many subjects for practicing! If you want to try again, just click on the button in the bottom-left corner with the title "Újra!".

Here below in this picture you can see the final solution:

Do you have any further thoughts for this idea?

The program codes are attached for those who have some programming knowledge. In authoring systems usually object oriented script languages are used. The Lingo language of Macromedia Director and the language used in Flash are such languages. The program is constructed of “functions” being executed when some event (e.g. user interference like a mouse click) happens. The syntax of Flash script language is similar to the C programming language but obviously during the program preparation Flash objects must be used and the programmer must know Flash environment. The Flash code of a puzzle is attached here as an example. Those who have programming experiences will see that the coding is not so difficult when the algorithm is created.
Certainly making or writing programs cannot be expected from teachers undertaking the development of electronic syllabuses. The primarily task of developing mentors is the design work of interactive elements.
We hope however that we could get the interest of IT teachers familiar with programming!
// Setting start parameters
wait hole = 1;
wait point = 0;
wait end = 0;
wait maxprobe = 5000;
wait places: Array = new Array();
for (i = 2; i < 10; i++)
{
places[i] = i;
}
for (i = 2; i < 10; i++)
{
tile = eval("tile" + i + "_mc");
tile.onPress = fnMozgasd;
}
again_btn.onPress = fnNewGame;
// Start new game when clicking on this button!
fnNewGame();
function fnNewGame()
{
point = 0;
end = 0;
fnMixing();
possibility.text = maxproba;
score.text = 0;
result_mc._visible = false;
}
// Moving – when the player clicks on a picture
function fnMove()
{
if (!end)
{
which = this._name.substring(4, 5);
point += fnMove(which);
score.text = point;
possibility.text = maxprobe - pont;
if (fnReady())
{
loadMovie("grat.jpg", result_mc);
end = 1;
}
else if (point == maxproba)
{
loadMovie("unsuccesful.jpg", result_mc);
end = 1;
}
score.text = point;
}
}
// Moving pictures
function fnMove(unit)
{
direction = fnCanmove(elem);
obj = eval("tile" + unit + "_mc")
aktUnit = unit;
if (direction == 1)
{
places[unit]--;
hole++;
obj._x -= 90;
return 1;
}
if (direction == 2)
{
obj._x += 90;
places[unit]++;
hole--;
return 1;
}
if (direction == 3)
{
obj._y -= 90;
places[unit] -= 3;
hole += 3;
return 1;
}
if (direction == 4)
{
obj._y += 90;
places[unit] += 3;
hole -= 3;
return 1;
}
return 0;
}
// Checking if the chosen picture can be moved?
function fnCanmove(unit)
{
place = places[unit];
//is the hole to the left?
if (place != 1 && place != 4 && place != 7)
{
if (place - 1 == hole)
{
return 1;
}
}
//is the hole to the right?
if (place != 3 && place != 6 && place != 9)
{
if (place + 1 == hole)
{
return 2;
}
}
//is the hole above?
if (place > 3)
{
if (place - 3 == hole)
{
return 3;
}
}
//is the hole under?
if (place < 7)
{
if (place + 3 == hole)
{
return 4;
}
}
return 0;
}
// The function gives a logic value being “true” when the puzzle is done
function fnReady()
{
good = 1;
for (i = 2; i < 10; i++)
{
if (places[i] != i)
good = 0;
}
return good;
}
// Random ordering of pictures when starting a new game
function fnMixing()
{
pcs = random(1000);
for (i = 0; i < db; i++)
{
unit = random(9) + 1;
fnMove(unit);
}
mixing = 0;
}
function fnSliding()
{
obj = eval("tile" + actUnit + "_mc");
if (actDirection == 1) //left
{
if (obj._x > aktEnd)
{
obj._x -= 10;
}
else
{
obj._x = aktEnd;
delete onEnterFrame;
}
}
}