Week 4, Communications, 21-08-2007

Week four lecture was all about communication. As for communication it has change so much since Justin Freeman first started doing her University course. One of the main changes of the years has been Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Week four lecture was all about the different types of communication between two or more people. The reason why communication through technology is used because most people have access to this technology and it makes life easier. There are several different ways to communicate with other people. Some different ways are:
· Pod casts
· Wiki
· Chat rooms
· Internet phone
· Blogs
· Emails etc

The lecture also included information about emails. Emails are a very useful way to communicate with other people. They are useful as a lot of people are connected to the Internet and they have some sort of email bases. This can be used to get information about an assignment of another peer or writing to family or friends in a social way. Also have to be cautious with email as the message can be miss read or if using out look express the users details can be hacked.

In week four tute we looked at organizing the folders in your email account. This is just like store information in word etc in different categories. This becomes very handy when storing information from different subjects making it easy to find. I have done mine as follow:

By l_mason at 2007-09-09

We also look at pod cast. There are many different reasons for students to use pod casts. It gives the students many different ways to learn especially the ones that find it hard to learn the first time. I mean recording of the lecture. Some people find it hard to learn when the information is played once. Having pod casts will enable the student to go home and listen to the information or just a certain part of it to get the main points. This will enhance the students learning and also note taking.

There are four different types of communication that are used by everyone at least once. They are the dependent (same place, example online games), independent (anywhere, example MSN), synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous in where all the people that are communicating are all in the same place at the same time for example a phone call where as asynchronous people that are communicating take turns in having there say for example writing letters.

From this lecturer I have learnt that communication is not only a major factor of university life but also life in general. I use MSN a fair bit to keep in contact with the people that have left school, who I rarely get to see anymore. I also realize that such things as university emails and getting other students emails is something that I should use to help myself and also other peers for doing such things as assignments. Using ICT is very good as it is usually free and enables the user to look for information. I am surrounded with communication resources, its just a matter of knowing which one to use and use it correctly.

There are four readings for this week. The first two readings are about emails that are used as guides to using emails. The first reading by tech soup is all about what a person should and shouldn’t do. It gives examples of a situation that may occur and gives helpfully information of what to do in that situation and also what not to do. The second is about having an appropriate email. Now in university all emails should be appropriately addressed, no spelling mistakes etc. Its all about etiquette with an email so that the person that has written it comes across as very professional. The IRC prelude reading is about chat rooms. It talks about how you can easily talk with many people that are also on the net. But this also opens to hackers etc to shut you down. The last reading, ‘the problem’ is all about Spam email. It describes exactly what spam email is, its low point of what it can do and also gives some solutions of what can be done.