Unit 1 Communication and Employability P5

P5 Use IT to aid communication

Channel	Benefit	Disadvantage
Word-processed document	Really easy to edit and change. Search document for specific paragraph. Permanent record of stuff. Spell checker.	You need a computer to make a word document and a printer to print it out, printer ink can be expensive
Presentations	Easy to get your point out to a large audience and can include pictures and videos	Can be hard to stand up in front of an audience, sometimes too many animations or transitions can make it hard to watch, or too much or too little information on each slide
Web pages	Very easy to search through numerous webpages with a search engine, easy to c+p info, ctrl+f to find specific information	Some webpages are made up information, can contain viruses or take a while to find the information that you need amongst adverts
Email	A lot quicker to get information out than by a letter for example, can also add attachments and send to numerous people without having to type it out again	Can be easy to be very informal when the situation calls to be more formal, or send the wrong attachment
Blogs/v logs/podcasts	They are all good ways for a company to interact with it’s customers in a modern way Vlogs are good for advertising	Videos can take a long time to edit, and you have to have a good internet connection to be able to stream videos
Video conferencing	Can have a basically face to face meeting even if people are in other countries and this is a lot cheaper than a plane ticket, or if you get ill you can still attend meetings from your home	Slow connections or the internet going down can make video conferencing really hard if people keep cutting out or disconnecting, requires a good internet connection and a webcam
Fax	Can be easier than spending an email attachment if the internet goes down but the power is still on	Not a lot of people still have a fax machine
Skype	Free, very easy to use, instant messaging and phone calls (with or without webcam) over the internet	Requires internet connection and sometimes the call can cut out if one person’s internet dies, requires microphone and can require webcam for video calling
Social Network	Can be a very easy way to keep up with people and find out what’s going on in the world (e.g. BBC or CNN news twitter) can be easy to contact people over the messaging services	Inappropriate content can be posted that can come back to haunt you, requires internet connection
Phone call	Very quick and easier to communicate that via email for example, as replies are instant	Can be costly if calling from a mobile and if you need to think about your response for a while it is not ideal, you can’t go back and change what you said if you decide that you want to reword what you said like with an email or word document
Voice Mail	Easy to leave a recorded message with a person if they can’t reach the phone	Some voice mail systems are flawed in that after you have listened to the message it deletes it so you can’t re-listen to it if you needed the hear the information again
VLE	Easy for college and school students to access work and find resources to use	Can be hard for non technical teachers to manage it. If the internet goes down in the school or college then no one can access the vle