ICT as Communicative Tool

The lesson on communication tools helped me in building my ideas about how its applications enable and help learners for easy communication. I could also understand more on this system that it helps for easy communication between teachers and students or between students themselves despite the physical barriers either by space, and time beyond the classroom walls. The learning of the students can be effectively nurtured when students make use of ICT to communicate with other students, peers, parents and to the large community as a whole.

I had enough knowledge about this tool; communicative tools which included the use of e-mail, electronic bulletin boards, chat, teleconference (video conferencing), Facebook, electronic whiteboard and other social networking sites. However, something new that I could learn from the lesson is the two separate tools; synchronous and asynchronous of communicative tool. Synchronous communicative tools such as chat or video conference enable real-time communication, whereas asynchronous communicative tools such as e-mail, we-chat, blog and the discussion forums enable exchange of messages to people not live (not online at instant). I feel that synchronous communicative is more effective in situation which needs immediate response to help in solving urgent problems of the learners. Asynchronous tools are more effective in situations and activities that require time and where the delay of responses can be considered for discussion. However, there can be quality discussion in using either of the tools. Understanding the effectiveness of these two tools of communicative tool, I could learn enough which can help me in integrating those applications in my lesson planning in school settings based on the situations in which the tool would favor the best.

There are always benefits in using the tools. However, there are some limitations of those communicative tools. The educators and learners are challenged with use of synchronous communicative tool. The poor or weak internet connection network distracts and affects the discussion. The example on the same situation (Covid Pandemic); the online classes due to shutdown of colleges and school, some students cannot make their presence in the discussion or the students’ responses are delayed due to weak internet network. This ultimately affects teaching and learning. The discussion in synchronous tools loses focus because of the multiple discussions since many participants are into the discussion at a time. The discussion is even affected if the users lack knowledge for operating devices and the applications. For example, different tutors try using different applications and students’ presence is either delayed or missed during the very first try.

Similarly, I could also learn some of the disadvantages of using those applications. The discussion using the asynchronous applications reduces the discussion frequency since it is time delayed discussion. The participants can lose interest due to delayed responses from the other person and checking for the replies and discussion is an additional task which people do not like. For example, students post queries on VLE discussion forums and the person check for replies after few hours or a day. If the person does not find replies even after a day, the learning of the student and discussion is discouraged. Similarly, the person who blogs loses interest if the posts are not read and commented which can reduce the blogger’s post frequency and interest for making posts.

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Discussion in VLE discussion forum

We-chat used for discussion (Teaching and learning)