Food for thought

So, While researching for my upcoming meeting with the school board. I came across this article. I think this plays a very important role. I would love to discuss this..

Effective communication in the virtual world can be tricky. After all, you're communicating with people you don't know. Communicating effectively without knowing a person isn't easy. It's impossible to know what angle will work with a person when you don't know anything about them.

Also, a huge part of communication revolves around body language and eye contact and you don't have these key points via the Internet. This puts everyone at a large disadvantage when we are tying to understand someone and they are trying to understand us.


In face-to-face communication or telephone conversations, we can rely on a person's voice to help us determine what the person is feeling. On the Internet, we don't have this advantage, either.

There are ways to communicate in the right way virtually, though. It just takes a small effort to remember a few things.

Email-

Be clear and concise when you use email as a way to communicate. For some reason, people feel email is looser than regular written communication. It shouldn't be. You need to use email as if it were written on paper. The old adage say what you mean and mean what you say is good advice in any form of communication.

It's even more important in business emails to be just as formal and correct as you would have been on paper. If you send business emails out full of chatspeak and emoticons, you won't be taken seriously. Save the chatspeak and cutesy emoticons for your friends.

IM-

Instant Messages can sometimes be hard to decipher. Is that a typo or did the other person really mean they do want to take a phone call. So be careful when using IMs. Make sure you take your time and what you meant to say is what you actually typed.

Message Boards/Forums-

Be aware, some people on the Internet can be downright cruel because of the anonymous factor. So go into any message board or forum with the attitude that someone might just be rude on purpose. That said, don't ever behave this way. Just because it seems anonymous, remember there truly is another human on the receiving end of your words. And you never know what damage you can be inflicting on another person. That's not who you want to be. When in Doubt-

If you are ever unsure of what a person meant to say virtually, no matter what form we're talking about, ask! Miscommunication is so easy via Internet. People tend to read into another person's words because there are so many key communication elements missing. Instead of guessing, just come out and ask parts of any message you do not understand. That's the best way to effectively communicate in any situation.

http://www.helium.com/items/1577176-effective-communication-on-the-internet