Week 9

Lecture Summary:

Communication is a very important part of today's society. It takes place within networks and can be between individuals, between individuals and an organisation, within a business and also between a business and an external organisation. there are four types of communication. these are:-

• Synchronous = all parties are engaged in conversation at same time eg-phone call
• Asynchronous = parties take their turn in their own time eg-letters
• Place dependent = all parties have to be in the same place eg-online games
• Place Independent = parties can be anywhere in cyberspace eg-msn

ICT stands for information communications technology. This is used with mobile phones, ipods, laptops, video/tele-conferencing and electronic mail. Instant Message Clients like MSN are widely used thoroughout the world and allow users to instant message anyone, from anywhere, who is online at the same time. Discussion boards are similar but conversations are generally about a specific topic and can be accessed at any time. Even bigger than both these forms of ICT is emailing. This is usually in a form of a letter instantly sent to some elses web address. A major issue of this is emails can be easily forwarded to other people and most accounts recieve thousands of unwanted letters of spam (junk mail) each year. ICT will play a major role for not only university students but for everyone, now and in the years to come.

Tutorial Summary:

1. Visit the Google site - www.google.com and click on the GROUPS tab and enter a search term on a topic of interest to you. What term did you enter and what group(s) did you find?

I entered the term 'vegan' which is a person that does not consume or use any animal products. It is of interest to me because i am such a person. I found that the first two pages contained reliable vegan groups but after that it only found groups where the term 'vegan' had been written somewhere in the comments. Most of the groups were about the different recipes available and also discussions on how to succesfully maintain the vegan diet. There was also a couple about vegan health and raising vegan children. The first groups found were all about the actual vegan philosophy containing extensive discussions about different peoples point of view.

2. Investigate the messages posted on the topic and look through some of the bulletin boards containing them. Record your findings.

Most of the messages i found supported the vegan lifestyle and gave tips to living such a life as well as examples of recipes and their reasons why they are vegan. A few of the comments were anti-vegan but these usually had no substance to them and didnt provide any evidence to back up their opinion. They were mostly just one sentence lines persecuting vegans eg- "meat rules vegans drool". I feel if anyone wanted to turn vegan or wanted to find out more information these bulliten boards and groups will provide a load of information and support and are a great place to come to when in doubt.

3. Visit a podcast hosting site and look at one or two podcasts. What are the potential benefits of podcasts for university students?

I went to the site http://podcasts.yahoo.com/ and searched up dogs. most of the search results i found were videos about dogs in a comedy scene or songs entitled dogs. So i refined my search and found some podcasts that explained where the breeds of dog originated from and also short documentaries on how to train dogs. In terms of university i believe Podcasts have the ability to save alot of time because instead of turning up to a lecture a student can download the lecture podcast onto their ipods and listen to it when desired. There are alot of podcasts available to do with different topics and a student could use that as a resource in their assignments. Some students learn and absorb information better when they hear it, so through podcasts this may be a better learning experience and information system; for some people.

By danijolly22 at 2008-05-25

Reading Summary:

1. Guide to using email

The first was a website entitled "14 email do's and dont's- ways to make your messages more efficent and effective". This article describes how to make your email a more effective tool of communication and how you can structure the email to be a useful tool in communicating with somebody. i learnt that when writing an email the recipicent can actually take what you said the wrong way even though that was not your intention at all. i good way to prevent this is to not use any form of sarcasm and write directly to the point in an easy to understand manner. The second text was called Essential email etiquette this text describes different formatting styles for your emails and different ways of creating your email so it is set out correctly and also sets the right tones and stays on topic. Some of the subjects this website talks about arethe subject, addressing recipients properly, keeping messages pithy and attachments. The third was a video posted on youtube about how to practice good phone and email etiquette at work. it contains many tips and steps to help a person practice this good etiquette eg: always spell check your email before hitting send, it may save you alot of embarressment. The last was also a youtube video but this one was more about the problems of emailing. What people say in an email can often come back to hurt them, even costing people their jobs. Social networking sites use conversational text like lol-laugh out loud or btw-by the way, but email should be kept formal in the traditional format in order to convey what your trying to say correctly.

2. The problem with spam

Spam is the junk mail of emailing and is a big problem not only in Australia but worldwide. it usually clogs up email systems and unfortunetly important messages can go unnoticed or are accidently deleted with the spam. Spamming actually takes away recources from users and service providers without compensation and without authorisation. This website explains in detail all the different problems created by spam and provides hints and tips to help stop it from happening.