How To Use The Internet to Communicate Effectively

We might assume most students use the internet regularly these days. For work as well as social activities it’s a tool that we rely on a lot. But how to use the internet to communicate effectively? Let’s look at the different tools we can use and especially how they can be used to communicate in an educational setting, and what are their advantages and disadvantages?

In the past we had few options if we wanted to communicate with people over a long distance. We had telephones and we had letters, that was basically it. Right, I’m forgetting about telegrams and faxes, but let’s focus on widely spread, mainstream tools everybody has access to. The phone was the way to communicate directly to a person and sending a letter was the indirect way.

Nowadays phone calls are still made, and the mobile phone allows us to talk with each other whenever we want. Letters are still sent too, though way less often. And if we look at how we use computers to communicate we can roughly make the same distinction between direct en indirect communication: Read more

Gain Freedom by Disabling Your Network Connection

Recently I discovered Freedom for Mac OS X. This application disables all wireless and ethernet networking on your computer for up to three hours at a time. When you open the application it asks you ‘how many minutes of freedom’ you would like.

Set the amount, hit ‘OK’ and it you will not be able to use your internet or your wireless network anymore. Afterwards your connections will be re-enabled. You can quit Freedom before the time you set, but this does not get you back on the internet. You will have to restart your computer to for that.

Why would we want to do something like that? Is it so hard to keep yourself focused on your task at hand? Yes, for some people it is! What could be so distracting then? There are more than a few things that can keep you away from what you should be doing. Read more