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CONTENTS
1. Descriptions of iTV
2. Terms of use: interactivity
3. Developing/emerging technologies
4. Projects
5. Next steps
6. Further reading
The CeBIT technology show (2005) heralded the 'digital hub' as the next major development of home entertainment, organisation and learning technologies into a cross platform device situated in the home and connected with mobile and peripheral devices. At the heart of this hub is the emergence of a technology that develops the current notion of interactive television (iTV) into a tool for entertaining, socialising and learning.
Television already plays an important role in many family and home spheres and Kelly et al (1997) highlight the important social nature of watching television as viewers "are participating in a ritual that links [them] to thousands of other citizens", a fact evidenced by the real-world discussion about soap characters and other television activities. With the development of iTV, this social participation can be extended as viewers change from receivers and observers to creators, producers, directors, and broadcasters within distributed communication with others.
The Futurelab Innovations Workshop series aims to help pioneer new ways of designing and using ICT to enrich and transform the learning experience by creating a space that brings together experts from the creative, education and technology communities. This Insight paper aims to highlight some of the key issues relating to the role iTV can play in enabling learning opportunities. By bringing together these issues, this paper attempts to provide the beginnings of a shared understanding between the participants at the Innovations workshop. In doing so, it aims to help to stimulate discussion and creative thinking about how iTV resources can best be developed and used to support and enrich learning experiences in 5, 10 and 15 years-time.
1. DESCRIPTIONS OF iTV
Traditionally, television has been a broadcast/publishing technology using a one-way communication model as an example of 'mass media', in the same way that newspapers and radio are presented to a 'receiving' audience without opportunities for feedback. Whereas the latter communicated using, for example, letters to the editor and phone calls to broadcasters, television developed its own line for making viewers more active and engaged in their use of TV.
Throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s major projects in the US (and also in France and Japan) saw developments in television that included: audience feedback; electronic transactions (home banking); video-on-demand (VOD), and information retrieval, all of which enabled a passive viewer to use television in a more active way - providing limited searching, selecting and voting systems for feedback. The late 1990s saw a development that included web access providing the viewer with a greater variety of tools and information sources. During this time, the UK, Germany, Sweden and Italy focused mainly on VOD - a 'search and retrieval' option for selecting desired programs.
From this point iTV can be split into two visions or 'imaginaries': iTV writ small and iTV writ large.
iTV writ small:
Micro level understanding of interactive TV - focusing upon emerging technologies, media projects, markets and the development of regulations.
iTV as an information and communication platform providing channels, VOD, home communication services, shopping, etc.
iTV writ large:
Macro level understanding of iTV - organising ICT within broader historical context.
iTV as manifestation of a vision to build a comprehensive domestic communication system for high-tech homes of the future.
Focus upon socio-cultural viewpoint.
Both imaginaries provide a vision of iTV as a device for personalising content to meet viewer requirements. iTV writ small is closer to the digital TV/iTV that is (beginning to be) available today, with numerous channels, home shopping, e-mail and VOD. Sky+ offers a more advanced version of VOD to include recording of multiple channels, rewinding and replaying live TV with an aim to link more closely to user preferences. Within the definition of iTV writ small, the Innovations Workshop looked at:
How can iTV (writ small) best be used by learners to tailor content to their own needs at appropriate times?
However, iTV writ large provides a more complex aim for iTV that imagines a digital hub that links to peripheral and mobile technologies to develop a convergence between tools that aid communication - for entertainment, learning and socialising. It is iTV writ large then that provides us with the opportunity to develop our thinking about the role that this digital hub can play in encouraging and developing learning.
Taking this writ large definition of iTV, the Innovations Workshop investigated:
How can learners best navigate and interact with iTV through a traditional hand-held controller?
What input/control device could develop the possibilities of iTV (writ large) as a tool for learning?
2. TERMS OF USE: INTERACTIVITY
Learning contexts and digital tools are widely encouraged if they are deemed to be 'interactive', yet what does this term mean for the development of a tool to aid learning in the home? Kim and Sawhey's (2002) conceptual framework of interactivity consists of:
- communicability - various forms and various audiences
- malleability - flexible use of medium (voice-data-video)
- programmability - informal processing and production platform
- creativity - potential to create one's own message.
An important recognition of interactivity is the provision of a "timely and functional feedback circuit" (Newhagen et al 1995 p166) that provides quick, direct and focused feedback to learner actions. Important in this description is the notion of the circuit. For an activity to be termed interactive there must be a loop of related activity: action - reaction - interaction: building directly upon the previous activity or action. This can be highlighted both by looking at the morphological roots of the words and also academic definitions of interactive resources and interactive communication.
Two key approaches to interaction (within the field of iTV)
Communication approach
Interactivity within a communication approach (Rafaeli 1988; Williams et al 1988) relates to the cyclic interplay between two actors. In the case of iTV, one actor is the 'viewer', the other the digitally presented action. The focus though is upon the (at minimum) three-part interplay between actors.
Interactivity is the "[f]eedback that relates both to previous messages and to the way previous messages related to those preceding them." (Rafaeli 1988, p120)
Williams et al go further in their definition by highlighting the opportunity of the participants to exchange roles, of director and viewer, of encoder and decoder. This definition highlights the way in which the passive viewer must become an active agent in using iTV.
The level of interactivity is "[t]he degree to which participants. have control over, and can exchange roles in" the communication process. (Williams et al 1988, p10)
The final definition within the communication approach is that an "interactive medium is a vehicle that enables and constrains multidirectional communication flows among the members of a social unit with two or more members: examples are telephone, paper mail, electronic mail, voice messaging, and computer conferencing" (Markus 1987, p492). Developing the examples to include iTV sees a technological tool that provides opportunity for multidirectional communication between individuals and distributed groups.
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