Originally published September 16, 2008
These days not having an e-mail address is almost unheard of, and who doesn’t have a cell phone?
Technology has become a big part of most of our day-to-day lives and it has helped us to become an efficient and better-connected society.
The Internet makes all information handy and recently it made tutors from Beijing available to students in California.
Through the Internet phone Skype, eight students in California State University’s Asian and Asian American Studies departments signed up to receive tutoring in the fundamentals of Chinese, straight from Beijing, according to campustechnology.com.
A class at Cal State Long Beach has signed up for this eChinese program no doubt due to the positive feedback from other students and instructors. Gaining information via the World Wide Web is fast and easy and, with the creation of online colleges and classes, learning can be too.
Online classes can provide an option for busy students and can save time, money and frustrations that accompany traveling to campus. But how do we know the effectiveness of online classes? It relies partly on the trustworthiness and ethics of the student and partly on the checkpoints put in place to prevent cheating. However, we cannot be sure the student doesn’t have a friend handy with the book, ready with the answers.
Besides that, students lose the social aspect of going to class and learning side-by-side with others. It is now possible to keep up with friends, gain an education, work and shop all without leaving the house. What a sad convenience. If everyone enrolled in online courses, we would become a society that has forgotten how to communicate because it won’t stop there.
Laptops are becoming more and more present in our classrooms and, though some students are taking notes, many are cruising through MySpace and Facebook during lectures.
Do we want our future professionals to be half educated because they were only half listening in class?
Technology can certainly be an advantage to learning, but it also has a huge potential for hindering it.
Think about it; everyone is armed with a cell phone and you’re lying to yourself if you think you can go a day comfortably without one. The feeling of not being connected is not one we are used to.
Are we going too far and relying too much on technology?
The creation of the iPhone and similar technologies has made it possible to take the Internet everywhere. Technically speaking, a student could be taking a test while riding the bus.
Stepping back and thinking about how much we rely on the Internet and an entity that has no rules is a bit scary. Wikipedia is the bible to some, and the millions who religiously check their social-networking sites are dangerously close to a computer-based life.
That’s not to say technology is creating a fast track to social destruction. Many great things have come from connecting with people around the globe and freely sharing information.
Sites like meetup.com create a place for like-minded people to rally together to promote change and exchange ideas. For example, last spring the Daily Forty-Niner reported unfair legislation trestricting Los Angeles’ taco trucks. A huge community movement, spread through e-mails, helped to reverse that legislation and L.A. now has its beloved taco trucks back.
However, we must be careful in our indulgence and dependence of technology. Let's not become caught up in a world of monitors.
Let’s hope we maintain a happy medium and use technology to further our knowledge and not let it turn us into a cyberspace society.
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