Learning Resources
Outcomes
In this lesson you will
- define technology
- describe how humans use technology to meet their needs and wants
- describe the relationship between technology and change
- define technological systems
- describe the major organization of technological systems
- name and briefly describe two major categories of communication technology
Students will:
- Define technology
- Define system
- Define communications
- Describe forms of communications
- Distinguish face-to-face from technological means of communicating
Introduction
The primary purpose of this section is to introduce the fundamental concepts of communication technology, including basic terminology and communications systems. This course focuses on technology mediated human to human communications. It also examines the role of human to machine and machine to machine communications. These are often essential when information is communicated from one person to another.
Communication requires a source of information, a way of encoding the information so that it can be sent or transmitted, a means of sending the information and of receiving the information, and a means of decoding the information. Additionally if the information is to be available for more than one usage, there has to be a means of storing and retrieving it.
When people communicate face to face, each person is a source of information, encodes it in the form of words and gestures, and transmits it. As a receiver of information the person has to decode the words, gestures, and intonation of the spoken word, and assign meaning to it. The message that was encoded and transmitted by the sender is not always decoded properly when it is received. When this occurs, the differences are said to be due to noise or interference on the communication channel. In face to face communication, people use memory to store and retrieve information.
The use of tools and technological processes for communication is not a recent phenomena. It has occurred for as long as people have been trying to communicate. Cave paintings and totem poles are two examples of how messages are stored and transmitted. A telephone conversation usually involves person to person (talking and listening, although the person talks to the phone which encodes the sounds as electricity and transmits the signal and the phone on the other end receives and decodes the electrical signal into sound which the second person hears), person to machine (dialling and speaking into the handset), and machine to machine (routing the call). Each of these subsystems encodes and decodes information, sends and receives information, and stores and retrieves information. Each of these communication systems and subsystems have similar parts and functions. The universal systems model and the the communications model are used to assist in the description and understanding of communication technologies.
Prerequisites
To be successful in this lesson, it would be helpful to know the following:
- How to use a browser
- How to conduct internet searches (for example Google http://www.google.ca)