Network security in global connectivity

Network Security: Opening to the World

The collection of tutorials and demonstrations of Web conferencing software applications shows how pervasive the adoption of social networking design criterion and user interface requirements are today in collaboration software. The pervasive adoption of social media design requirements including usability, all anchored in Web 2.0 design objectives, in addition to multimedia support, is dominating online collaboration platforms of all types (Bernoff, Li, 2008). Taken together the tutorials and product demonstrations illustrate how far the basic concept of Web conferencing has progressed from the initial days of just being able to show a given presentation online (Bisdikian, Brady, Doganata, Foulger, 1998).

State-of-the-Art Web Conferencing

What is immediately apparent from the series of demos and tutorials seen is how pervasive the ability to interactively communicate on a given presentation, project or report in real-time. The core concepts of Web 2.0 technologies and their design objectives are all predicated on ensuring a high level of shared content development and definition, which are the core design objectives of social networks (Bernoff, Li, 2008). Another aspect of this development is the ability to quickly define roles-based information requirements and needs by participant in any given session, the ability to track activity by role within a given session, and also the option for configuring the audience participation levels of any number of optional channels from online to audio alone. All of these elements taken together are deliberately designed to allow for greater levels of control over the specific web conferencing session. Defining specific attributes and characteristics of each session is now possible, tailoring every aspect of web conferencing for the specific requirements and preferences of each audience and their needs.

The ability to tailor web conferencing to the dimensions of each specific audience has implications for teaching and training. The main lesson learned from viewing the tutorials and programs is the ease and flexibility of configuring each specific session to the unique needs of an audience. Feasibly these technologies could be used for creating highly unique and tailored learning experiences for students who were learning through online universities only for example. The ability to tailor all forms of digital content, from music and video to drawing boards and the inclusion of self-pacing materials, shows the potential of these technologies to support online learning over an entire semester for example (Suduc, Bizoi, Filip, 2009). The implications on long-term learning using these technologies is also significant. It is clear that the recursive nature of how they are designed would allow for repetitive study of complex concepts, including the more challenging areas of math, statistics and the sciences.