Ci 2312 Week 8 Technology and Life
As an international student, I think this week’s topic is really interesting to me. Because it not only made me rethink what the Internet means to our current situation, but it also made me rethink a bit about my life experiences this year. During this quarantine period at home, my most intuitive feeling is that I have become less connected to people. As an international student, studying in an unfamiliar country was a very stressful thing. Being able to hang out with my friends for a cup of coffee on the weekends was the best way for me to relax. However, as all the classes moved online, our homework load started to double. At the same time, we didn’t have a direct way to communicate with the teachers, which led to many questions not being explained. This led to a lot of stress during my first semester of online classes. I didn’t have time and was afraid to hang out with my friends. Most of the time, my friends and I had to struggle with homework and exams. But the online course gave us some freedom in terms of time and allowed us to use some video software to organize some meetings. For example, I could use Zoom to study with my friends or watch the same movie together. It gave us all a new understanding of the definition of our relationships. We started to understand that sometimes people don’t need to talk face to face; they can communicate deeply even through the Internet.
According to Garfin (2020), “Schedule flexibility associated with telecommuting may have positive impacts on personal and family life and may even result in increased life satisfaction over time.” Online learning does give us a lot of flexibility in our schedules and reduces the amount of time wasted on traffic. It gives us more time to focus on tasks and the ability to have more time to accomplish what we want to do. For example, because my schedule is more flexible, I have the opportunity to travel to another state to see my sister. Even though our jet lag was different and I needed to get up two hours earlier for class, I still had a happy week. During this time, I had the opportunity to see different places and strengthen the bond between my family and me. Therefore, I think we can’t ignore the disadvantages that come with online learning, such as not being able to communicate with the teacher in a timely manner. But on the other hand, the flexibility that comes with online learning also allows us to step out of our busy lives and look at our lives from a different perspective.
