Communicative tools are those applications that enable the easy flow of communication either between teachers and students or amongst students. communicative tools allow us to easily communicate beyond the physical barrier either by space, time, or both of the classrooms. With the use of communicative tools such as email, VLE, google classroom, and many other applications, the communicators need not necessarily be present in the same space or time zone. All thanks to communicative tools that learning can take place even beyond the classroom walls. Towards the end of the session of communicative tools, I came to know that there are two types of communicative tools and they are as follows:
Synchronous or also called real-time communication: as the name suggests, communicators in this type of communication must be present at the same time. An example of this type of communication would be videoconferencing where both the teacher and students are present for the communication at the same time.
Advantages
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Disadvantages
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Urgent issues can be resolved immediately with prompt feedback. We did a video conference with our module tutor and found it pretty helpful as we could ask and show our problems with assignments.
| we had to constantly mute and unmute the audio so I found that little exhausting. |
Asynchronous communication: this type of communication does not require communicators to be logged on to the internet at the same time. One common example is the use of VLE discussion forum for learning.
- AdvantagesDisadvantagesIt provides more thinking time for the responders. We have been using VLE for discussions and it is quite handy as well as easy to use.It fails to maintain the interest of the users and checking the blogs, the virtual learning environment is an additional task. Sometimes, I did not want to write in the discussions.
The communication tool basically emphasizes the social constructivist learning theory where people use communication tools such as email, WeChat, Skype, and etc to interact with other people to enhance their ideas and knowledge.
There are lots of opportunities using communication tools such as sharing ideas and knowledge, exploring new things, construct new knowledge, and make relation with the people around the world.
However, there are threats while using communication tools such as lead to addiction, become more dependent on the information source, and a high chance of losing one's own culture and identity as people are exposed to other cultures.
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| communication tools |



