1. Joining The Online World Prepared by: Mahmoud Mustafa mmustafa@aou.org.bh Mr. Zakaria Al-Rababa’h zakaria@aou.org.bhzakaria@aou.org.bh Mr. Ammar Al-Qaragholi aalqaragholi@aou.org.bh Mr. Ahmad Kananah kananah@aou.org.bh Arab Open University Bahrain

2. 1.1 E-Mail and computer-based forums What is e-mail and computer- based forums? Exercise1: Forums (The Ice Breaker Activity) Exercise2: Dialogues Exercise3: More activities Exercise4: Your profile

3. E-mail and Computer Based Forums E-mail is the process of sending messages directly from one computer to another. It became very popular, and became a major use of the networks. It was asynchronous. This means that one could communicate without being connected at the same time as the person being contacted, but replies might be exchanged much more rapidly than by post. This contrasts with telephones or the later video- conferencing, which are synchronous, meaning both parties must be present at the same time.

4. E-mail crosses time zones. Can reach many people with the same message. Reduces paper flood. Does not interrupt meetings in the way a ringing telephone does. E-mail and Computer Based Forums

5. Voice Mail: A voice mail is a system translates the words of a message into digital impulses. Stores on disk as any other data. The stored message is reconverted to audio form. It seems like a spoken version of E-mail.

6. Main Components of E-mail: Header: To: (recipient’s address) anyone@aou.org.bh anyone@aou.org.bh Cc: Carbon copy to other recipients. Bcc: Blind carbon copy to other recipients. Subject: message title as ( Salam ) Attachment: Specify a file to send via e-mail. Body: The area where you can type your message.

7. Forums = Mailing lists = Group discussions = Conferencing Mailing lists are still widely used for discussion. The group discussions are called computer conferences or forums. On the Internet these are called newsgroups, and they now cover a huge range of topics, technical and personal.

8. Forums versus Face-to-Face or Telephone Discussions: In Forums people can participate even if their circumstances would make face-to-face meetings difficult. Widely scattered groups can maintain active contact. Some people who are housebound or have disabilities have found them especially liberating. Disabilities which might inhibit communication, and characteristics which might evoke prejudice, are not visible. There is no problem in getting your turn to speak. If you miss part of a discussion, there is a written record to let you catch up.

9. On the negative side, there is a delay between sending a message and receiving a reply, which may be minutes, hours, or even days. Asynchronous discussions are very much slower than synchronous ones. Messages are text-based, so tone of voice and body language are missing, and with them many of the social cues which unconsciously regulate discussions. This sometimes leads to emotional outbursts, called 'flaming', which would not be tolerated so easily in face-to-face discussions. And of course, someone can only participate in a forum if they have a computer Forums versus Face-to-Face or Telephone Discussions:

10. LMS Forums: Forums are the place for group discussions. Messages sent to a forum can include attachments. All participants in a forum can read, send and reply to messages. Students and tutors may also give ratings to each others' messages so messages in the forum are ranked using these ratings.

11. LMS Forums: Forum Description Tutor Group Forum The group main forum. TGA1 Forum The forum for the first group activity (TGA1:Ice breaker). TGA2 Forum The forum for the second activity (TGA2: effective groupwork online). You will need to participate in this forum in order to complete the first assignment. TGA3 Forum The forum for the third and the last activity (TGA3: the web channel). You will need to participate in this forum in order to complete the second assignment.

12. Dialogues: Computer mediated dialogue between pairs of users. A tutor can open a dialogue with a student, a student can open a dialogue with a tutor, and (optionally) a student can open a dialogue with another student. A tutor or student can be involved in many on-going dialogues at any time. A dialogue can have an unlimited number of entries. A dialogue can be closed by either party at any time. Closed dialogues cannot be reopened. However, a closed dialogue can be viewed by either party provided it is still in existence.

13. More activities in the Arab Campus Assignments: Places where you can submit your answers. Quizzes: Online Midterm exam area. Chats: many-to-many synchronous text-based chats Resources: The course material and any other resources Wikis: Editing and creation of web pages Choices: Online voting on certain issues Surveys: filled-in for quality assurance purposes Your Profile: People  Participants; Fill-in/Edit your profile the latest time possible

14. 1.2 More on communications More advanced CMC Exercise5: Recent activity Exercise6: Calendars Exercise7: Grades and password

15. More advanced CMC Computer-Mediated Communications (CMC) are communication types where computer is mainly involved; including e-mail and other sorts of communication such as forums, dialogues, chats and so on. E-mail and other sorts of CMC have been around for much longer than the World Wide Web ( www ).

16. Beyond the browser: E-mail E-mail package: Eudora Most browsers comes with e- mail software built-in: Netscape has Messenger and Internet Explorer has Outlook Express. Web-based e-mail services: Hotmail, Coolmail, and Yahoo: connect to the service's website and then read and write all your messages entirely online from any computer that has access to the Web working offline: specialized e- mail applications allows users to keep copies of messages on hard disk, organize them into folders, set up mailing lists and address books, write messages without being connected then connect to send them and receive new ones, and search through messages for key words, and other features.

17. Networking The Mainframe-Terminal system (the old System) Mainframe computers “ Mainframes ”: expensive machines that served a whole company or department, connected to users through 'terminals‘ which had a screen and a keyboard only (no computing power, all the computing was done in the mainframe computer). Mainframes ran continuously, 24 hours a day, every day. Some Mainframes were linked via networks to other mainframes. View the Mainframe-Terminal Animation View the Mainframe-Terminal Animation

18. E-mail exchange through Mainframes As the terminals have had no storage, E-mails were stored in the mainframe. For an e-mails sent to users linked to the same mainframe, if all recipients were connected at the same time, delivery of e-mail would be almost instantaneous. If they connected later, they could collect the mail you had left for them. For users linked to different mainframes, the mainframe computers would periodically send all their outgoing mail across the growing networks that linked them, to the recipients' computers, sometimes via several intermediate computers on the way. This introduced delays ranging from minutes to days, depending on how often each mainframe sent and received e-mail. This principle still describes the world-wide e- mail system, but the details are now different. View the Linked Mainframes Animation View the Linked Mainframes Animation

19. Client-Server System As computing power became cheaper, personal computers (PCs) began to appear and become popular. Smaller, local machines now had considerable computing power. Central machines, called 'servers' run continuously and are accessible to all authorized users whenever they want. This system replaced old terminal-to-mainframe system. PCs connect to the servers at various times, the processing load is split between a PC and a server as appropriate. The local PCs act as 'clients' of the 'server'. The 'client-server' system is now dominant. View the Client-Server Animation View the Client-Server Animation

20. Web servers…. A web browser usually act as a client of servers on the World Wide Web. It can access web pages held on servers throughout the world. Some of these servers may be massive machines capable of handling thousands of connections at once. Others may be small PCs, which individuals have left running and connected to the Internet to act as web servers for their hobby or small business. The server provides the content of the web page, while the client displays it, by providing windows, scroll bars, menus, etc. Thus the load of interacting with information on the Web is split between the server and your PC.

21. Offline Readers e-mail client can act as an 'offline reader', it will automatically connect to the server, Send newly written messages (written since the user last connected) and receive new messages waiting there, and then disconnect. The offline reader may be connected for a minute or two to exchange a dozen messages, whereas reading and replying to those messages online might take hours  offline readers can enormously reduce online costs. View the Offline Reader Animation View the Offline Reader Animation