Week Nine: Communications

Communication is the exchanging of information and thoughts between two parties. There are many kinds and means of communication. Synchronous, Asynchronous, 'Place dependent', and 'Place Independent'.

Achronous: All parties involved, all the time.

Synchronous: Take their turn, in their own time. Responding.

Place 'Dep': Same place

Place 'Indep' - Can be anywhere.

These definitions are in the context of communication between two parties.

Many means of communication:

• Mobile phones
• Video/tele-conferencing
• Ipod, Mp3, laptops
• Electronic mail (Email)
• Multimedia communications

Though some of these means of communication are merging. For example, mobile phones on the 3G network have mp3 players, Internet access, Navigator (GPS), Video and Multimedia. Music, Games, pod casts and even screenings of reality TV shows such as Big Brother can be viewed. MSN for a minimal $5 per month can be a download bonus.

The first task in today's workshop was to go to the well-know and commonly used, Google.com. Using their 'groups' option search a topic of personal interest and investigating their results. As we are finishing this Preparation course, and moving onto further education prospects, we are also looking into different financial pathways. My term of interest was 'Student loans'. The groups that came from the search resemble something i would see in a normal Google search; loan interests, potential bankruptcy and programs available. As i didn't think this was good enough i researched another term, with a similar link, 'HECS-fee help' My search results were similar to my first attempt, with a majority of links irrelevant to my search. With many of the messages and links posted not sharing purpose with my choice of topics.


The next step was to investigate the use of pod casts and their benefits to student. To do this i visited, http://podcasts.yahoo.com/. Sticking with a similar theme, i searched student loans again and to my surprise only two pages of results listed. A sign that a majority of the links were relevant to the search term I'd used. Browsing through some i noticed that most of them had the optio of where thery could download the pod cast to. With the most used being Itunes. The most commonly used music storage program; with the avaliabilty of holding, musioc, images videos and podcasts. This is a huge beneficery to students, like myself who are constantly, 'on-the-go'.





This is the results for my pod cast search... (Click image to enlarge)

Configuring a podcast to your ipod means that it is avaliable to listen whilst walking, catching public transpost and more recently through your radio in your car with an attatchment. This means students don't have to sit and listen to pod casts at home at their computer, but can access them everywhere with the click of a on switch. This is a fundamental feature to using pod casts as a students, Time and accessability.