ICT-Topic 5

• Blogs
• Online work spaces e.g web conferencing
• User-generated reference e.g. forums, message boards, wikis
• Virtual worlds
• Webmail
• Virtual Learning Environment e.g. school VLE
• Social networking e.g. Facebook

Users have a social presence in the online communities (how you're represented online). It is developed as you contribute online to the social community.

Provide an online community for a group of people who work together. They can meet, share files and work collaboratively online.

Features:

• Virtual meetings using online conferencing and VoIP
• Email, chat
• Shared folders and files- all work on the same document
• Online apps such as word processors, spreadsheets...

Provide information to help students learn, e.g have access to additional notes and homework in school or remotely from home.

Allows teachers to work collaboratively to create high quality learning material.

Features:

• Marking tools for teachers
• Email/Chat communication
• Track progress and data
• Personalisation for individual students
• Students can contribute to blogs/personalise their own space

A social networking site is an online community where people are liked together using their personal information.

Functions:

• Allow users to have an online presence
• Links users with others using personal information
• Allows users to stay in touch with other people
• Allows users to exchange information with others

Different social networking sites are aimed at different groups of people.

Advantages

• Easy for everyone to create personal page
• Easy way to keep in contact 
• Easy to make new friends
• Post interesting things
• Often free to join and use
• Easy way to share different types of information
• Efficient way to communicate

Disadvantages

• Waste a lot of time
• Loss of privacy
• Online bullying
• People may risk their personal safety

User-generated reference sites allow users to generate content collaboratively.

Wikis- websites where users can add or edit content collaboratively

Internet forums/message boards- allow people to hold discussions

Newsgroups- communities, like message boards allows users to discuss a particular topic

Review sites- allow users to post reviews to inform potential customers of the product/service they're considering to buy

Social bookmarking sites are similar to wikis, but users add bookmarks (weblinks) rather than content, then share them with others.

Features

• Users can store URLs online
• Give tag words to categorise the URLs
• Tags can then be used to search bookmarks by topic/category
• Users can share there bookmarks with others online
• Search for similar bookmarks from other users using tags
• Users can like/dislike content

Knowledge is the information and skills gained through experience/education.

• Information and knowledge can be made accessible to everyone through ICT
• Users can decide what information is important
• Information is constantly updated and is always open for improvement
• Can communicate/collaborate on a global scale

Advantages

• Large number of viewpoints

Disadvantages

• Variety of viewpoints may be overwhelming
• Its hard to know what information comes from a valid source

Collaborative working- about working together as a group to achieve common goals, helped by VoIP, social networking...

Teleworking- about working at home but staying in touch with others with the help of technology.

• People can work from home
• Cloud computing allows workers to access documents from anywhere (with Internet access)
• Decisions can be made more effectively
• Employers can check social networks to research potential employers

• May avoid face-to-face contact
• Employers may feel pressured to work from home
• Workers without Internet connection may be left out

Socialising on the Internet

• Easy way for people to keep in contact
• Easy translations for languages
• Available 24/7/365

• Need an Internet connection
• People can pretend to be someone they're not
• People spend less time with real friends

Behaving in an acceptable way:

• Respecting other people's opinions/computers/files
• Keeping passwords private
• Use antivirus software and firewalls
• Abiding by copyright law
• Not being innapropriate

The Internet allows us all to communicate and collaborate on a global scale. 

Globalisation means the increasing global relationships between cultures, people and economic activity. ICT has helped speed up the prrocess of globalisation.

Helped by ICT, many companies have now 'gone global'.

Countries now censor or control access to social networking sites and search engines to help them control access to information. The reasons for this are often:

• Politics
• Security
• Protection