Unit 1 - Introduction to Communications Technology 2104 NOTES - Communications Model

Communication is the sending and receiving of information or messages. The five major purposes of communication are to:

Inform Educate Persuade Entertain Control

Communication needs a source of information, a way to encode information to be sent or transmitted, a method to send the information and to receive the information, and a way to decode the information. ethods of storage and retrieval are also needed if the information has to be available for more than one usage. The diagram below illustrates the communications model.

!hen a person communicates with another, each person is the source of information. Each person encodes the information in the form of words, sounds and gestures, and transmits the information. "s the receiver, a person must decode the words, sounds, and gestures to assign the information meaning. The message is not always decoded the way in which the sender intended. In face#to#face communication, this can lead to miscommunication or interference. Persons use memory and what they have learned to store and retrieve information and to remember how to decode and encode information. The four main types of communication are:

$uman#to#human %e&ample: teacher giving a lecture, tal'ing with a friend( $uman#to#machine %e&ample: using the phone, using a computer, playing an instrument( achine#to#machine %e&ample: cybernetics, sense and control systems, automation( achine#to#human %e&ample: fire alarm, alarm cloc', radio, bu))ers, computers(

Communication Technology is the usage of technological processes to solve or communications needs and wants. Communication Technology e&tends the capabilities or our human senses. Two major types of Communications Technology include *raphics Communications and Electronic Communications. ra!hics Communications involves transmitting information and messages with the use of visual symbols, words and pictures. E&amples include +rafting, Photography, and *raphics Production.

Electronic Communications involves transmitting information and messages by changing them into electronic signals or codes. E&amples include telephone, cellular phone, computers, radio, telegraph and television. +o not assume that these two types of communications technologies are separate. In fact, most of today,s communication ta'es place due to a mi&ture of graphics and electronics. Ta'e a web#site for e&ample. !hat you see is the graphic part of this type of communication, what you do not see is the transfer of these graphics into electronic signals that travel throughout the internet via a vast networ' of fibre#optics and convention copper#based wiring.