This semester has gone so fast, it’s hard to believe it’s already over. Doing a subject where most of the assessment pieces were online was completely new to me and has indeed taken some getting used to.

New Communication Technologies is such a broad subject and has covered so many areas, from the very foundations of how and when computers were invented to weird and wacky stories about unknown planets in cyberspace.

Initially we studied what technology and communications actually are, by looking at Aristotle and later, the work of Shannon and Weaver.  From here we moved onto studying people like Charles Babbage and Alan Turing who each had a major role in the development of the computer. Microsoft and IBM were also significant organizations in the development of the PC.

Weeks 4 and 5 introduced us to the history of the internet and the notion of cyberspace. During these tutorials we also reviewed our email systems and explored various chat rooms on the web.

Debra Beatty presented Lecture 6 and discussed her online documentary, “The Wrong Crowd” which she completed in 1996. Although we didn’t get a chance to see much of it during the lecture, it was quite interesting. I found it really worthwhile to visit the website after the lecture to further explore the documentary.

‘Emerging Technologies’ and ‘Games – Theory and Practice’, were the subjects for weeks 7 and 8 and our tutorial exercises involved experimenting with our mobile phones and using more advanced functions of Microsoft Word.

The last couple of weeks involved subjects like cybertherapy, utopia, dystopia and technotopia and our tutorial exercises involved advanced functions of Microsoft Excel and again looking into Chat Rooms.

Overall some of the concepts in this course were interesting but sometimes rather hard to follow. I especially found the subject of cybertherapy very interesting but had a better understanding when doing my own research. This was probably also true in the lectures, as I found the concepts easier to grasp when reading through the lecture notes. I sometimes tended to get rather lost in the lectures. The lectures were very entertaining, but perhaps they needed to stick to the main points more.

At first I didn’t really enjoy watching the movies, but soon began to see how they were important in understanding and exploring some of our new and future technologies. I especially enjoyed ‘12 Monkeys’ with Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt, as it not only looked quite seriously at the notion of time travel and problems associated with it, but it was also quite funny and one of the easier movies to follow. I now look at science fiction movies in a completely different light. (I’m even starting to get quite addicted to Star Trek!)

Most of the tutorial exercises were quite basic but it was refreshing to go over them and also extremely helpful to look at some of the advanced functions in programs like Microsoft Word and Excel. It has been really beneficial to learn how to use tools like mail merge and macros.

Initially I had no idea what a blog was, so it was really interesting browsing over the various blogs on the web. As stated previously, I found it quite different having to do all of my work on the web and still probably find it easier to have my work on hard copy. It was interesting to experiment and learn about the blogs, but honestly, I don’t think they are something I will continue with.

As I mentioned above, there were certain points of New Communication Technologies that I didn’t enjoy but of others that I have gained a lot from. I feel, New Communication Technologies has given me a basic understanding of various technologies in our everyday lives and indeed opened my mind up to the endless possibilities of technology in the future.