Week Nine

Lecture Summary

The Lecture summary this week was all about ICT (Information Communication Technology). Communication via the internet has become a daily activity, whether it be between individuals for social purposes or between companies for business purposes. On the internet, there are four types of communication. These are: Same time, same place (chat rooms); Different time, same place (forums); Same time, different place (Instant messengers); and different time, different place (email). The Lecture then listed a few other examples of ICT including the mobile phone and tele-conferencing, but what the remainder mostly focused on was ICT via the internet, the main forms being email, IM, discussion boards/ forums, chat rooms, and social networking sites such as myspace and facebook. It went through each one of these individually, explaining in detail the basic protocols for each and outlined their benefits as well. A few of the lecture slides then went on to discuss the importance of 'Netiquette'; Using ICT requires us to be careful with the way we communicate our thoughts and ideas online because once we have communicated, we can't take it back, so for this reason it is important that we practise our etiquette. Then what briefly followed before the conclusion was some suggestions on how to avoid the problem of spam and spreading it to others when using emailm by avoiding forwarding or using 'BCC' (Blind Carbon Copy) rather than 'CC' so that email addresses of others aren't also forwarded.

Tutorial Tasks

When i went to the google groups page, i saw the list of 'popular groups' and clicked on the 'Atheism vs Christianity' because i knew there would be plenty of arguments in the discussion board since it is a touchy topic. In the 'search this group' box i typed 'universal beginnings'. Looking through the results i was mostly interested by the one titled 'Dawkins on Faith' as I have read two of his books before so I was interested to see what people had to say on him. The first discussion posted was by a theist who basically disaproves of Richard Dawkins' ideas in his book 'The God Delusion', in reference to his view on faith. The replies by others on the discussion board were quite interesting and everyone either objected the first comment or agreed with it, although as they the postings started becoming more defensive the so did the fall of etiquette...but of course you would expect some level of rudeness in discussion forms.

This is the original message posted on the discussion board:

"I was reading the God Delusion yesterday and Dawkins view of faith does not make sense in Christian theology. The problem is that he divorces faith as a belief devoid of evidence (in the strictly scientific norm of the nature of evidence as externally verifiable) from any notion of trust. In Christian theology faith is a form of trust. This means that it is not rooted in the absence of evidence, although the evidence in which it is rooted is clearly not of the scientific sort. But one does not come to faith based on what one has been told in the past or through simple logical formulations."

Now this is one of the postings opposed to the original message:

"Yes, but the point is one cannot tell the difference. We can't
tell if, in fact, God DOES want us to die heinous deaths at the hands of natural
disasters, or anything of that nature. The only way we can tell the difference
is by going OUTSIDE of the faith to our common humanism and determining what is
right there. That is why I say faith is ineffectual. It literally adds nothing
to the system of morality, unless it is used blindly (in which case it is almost
always used badly)...the problems come when "guess" and "believe" turn into
"knowing the mind of God" which is where the faith comes in. So the only place
where the faith is USED meaningfully to make decisions is in the "guess", but
all other places where it's used, it's misused."

So after reading various replies i came to conclude that on discussion boards, it is obvious that people take a long time in carefully forming their argument before they post it, and the argument, depending on whether they fall on 'deaf ears' or not, can continue on unsettled.


Podcasts:

I was unable to listen to any podcasts as one of the ones I searched on yahoo were free to download, and I couldn't locate any on the ECU site. However, these are the points on podcasts that I gather, may be of benefit to university students :

• Listening to audio is sometimes more effective than reading or viewing.


• University students may desire occasional changes in methods to how they learn


• Some of the podcasts come with visuals as well, so when viewing them on your computer it is an extra effective way to learn.

My search result for 'Lenny Kravitz'

Readings

Guide to Using e-mail

Correct etiquette procedures are important when using email as a form of communication, because you cannot just assume that the person you are sending the email to, will understand your thoughts or question if you don't express them clearly. You must also be aware that you don't know what the recipients current emotional state is, and sending email messages pose the risk of seeming insensitive or rude, thus it is imortant to be careful with what you say in the message and how you word it.