ICT as communicative tool

                              ICT as communicative tool 

 From discussion on ICT as communicative tool I learned that it is a systems which enable easy communication between the teacher and students or among students. Communication tools allow learners to learn and interact with each other or with teacher beyond the physical barrier either by space, time or both of the classroom. Examples of communicative tools include e-mail, electronic bulletin boards, chat, teleconferencing and electronic whiteboards.

Communicative tools can be divided into two sub-categories, Synchronous and Asynchronous. Synchronous communication tools (e.g., chat, electronic whiteboards or videoconferencing), enable real time (simultaneous) communication. These tool   is use for instructional activities that require higher degrees of interaction, both the person should be online at the same time as a telephone call and video conference for solving urgent problems or issues.

While using Synchronous communication tool we can get immediate response, instant feedback and can act upon it. But it lack to provide time to think what we want to say or our response to another. Synchronous communication would be difficult if speed of data connection are slow and due to many other side discussion, many lose focus.

Asynchronous communicative tools (e.g., e-mail, electronic bulletin boards, vle discussion forum, we chat, blog and etc.) here the exchange of information between people is not ‘live’, but somehow delayed. This tool is more appropriate for activities that require more time in analyzing before responding or those that are not urgent in nature. It does not require the people communication to be logged on the internet at the same time.

As we get more time to analyze the message, given answers can be even more meaningful as it has gone through process of elaboration. Some of the disadvantage of using Asynchronous communicative tool can be no immediate response, we don’t even know if the other person has received your message and the message loses human contact

                                                     vle discussion forum

                        Exchanging information on we chat 

                
Fig: using Google hangout for video conferencing