When their friends and families are 3,000 miles away, it is difficult for students to keep updated on news from back home, and even more difficult for them to imagine life without the instant communication tools present today.
With so many technological tools that link people all around the globe, students at Harlaxton have many options when they want to chat with friends or see the score of a local sports game.
Daniel Schroeder, a sophomore at the University of Evansville, enjoys all the different forms of communication.
“It’s great,” Schroeder said. “If you’re not using Skype, you can use Facebook or e-mail. I would hate not hearing back from people right away. I would probably think something was wrong.”
Ten years ago however, students always expected a delay in communication between friends and family overseas, said Ian Welsh, Harlaxton’s vice principal for business and technology.
“Technology has changed dramatically, even in the past decade,” Welsh said. “As far as communication goes, students were much more cut off … more divorced from home.”
Welsh believes this separation may have been better for students academically; it let them grow more independent and also made for fewer distractions.
Not everyone believes this, however. Eric Ford, a junior at Baker University, thinks the increase in technology has made schoolwork incredibly easier for students as well as helped them balance their lives here and the lives they left back home.
“If I’m doing research for a paper, it’s going to be much easier for me to go to Google and find sources than it would be for me to hunt through the library,” Ford said. “It would take a lot longer to get the answers I need.”
Shawn Owensby and Stephanie Kushel, a junior and sophomore at UE, agree with Ford that school work is easier, but the Internet speed may not be all that much faster than finding a book in the library.
“(The wireless Internet), especially at peak times, can be really slow, almost non-existent.” said Owensby,
Welsh said in order to combat this slow Internet problem, Harlaxton spends about £14 thousand ($20 thousand) on bandwidth a year.
“We buy as much as we can,” Welsh said, “but it gets difficult with so many new downloading tools and mega bits increasing all the time.”
Kushel thinks that even though the Internet can be slow sometimes, she enjoys the wireless aspect the school provides.
“It’s nice to be able to bring your laptop anywhere in the school and be able to connect to the Internet,” Kushel said.
Welsh said wireless capability is one of the most recent, as well as important, additions to Harlaxton’s technology and wonders where it will go from here.
"I'm always curious to see what the latest technology will bring, and how we can use it," Welsh said. "Even a few years from now, it will be interesting to see all that's changed."<br/>&#160;