8. The Time and Space Dimensions of Media

8.4. The Significance of the Internet

Broadcast/communicative and synchronous/asynchronous are two separate dimensions. By placing them in a matrix design, we can then assign different technologies to different quadrants, as in Figure 12 below. (I have included only a few – you may want to place other technologies on this diagram):

The significance of the Internet in terms of media characteristics

Why the Internet is so important is that it is an encompassing medium that embraces all these other media and technologies, thus offering immense possibilities for teaching and learning. This enables us, if we wish, to be very specific about how we design our teaching so that we can exploit all the characteristics or dimensions of technology to fit almost any learning context through this one medium.