These days, it’s hard to find a student who is not a technophile. New modes of communicating – MySpace, Facebook, forums, chat rooms, instant messaging, text messaging, and blogs – are an integral part of nearly every student’s life.

Assignments, syllabi and even textbooks are posted online. Student organizations communicate with their members via listserves and Facebook. Earbuds, laptops and cell phones tether students to a sophisticated, wired environment where they can have constant contact with professors, friends and limitless information.

These technologies, which are fueling a communications and social revolution, have profoundly altered the educational experience for students at KU Medical Center.

The sheer extent of connectivity has shifted the focus for students. When textbooks were king, memorization was paramount. Now, knowledge travels with students, allowing them to concentrate instead on solving problems – like how to keep from drowning in information.

Take Jennifer Schrimsher, for example. A second-year medical student, she embodies the thoroughly connected scholar. She has three different e-mail addresses, a Facebook page, four different instant messaging (IM) accounts, and she maintains a MySpace page for herself and Princess Isabella, her cat.

“I’m online all the time unless I’m in my car or asleep,” she said. She admits this can make it difficult to focus. So, this year, she’s sworn off online forums and limits her use of IM’ing.

“I’m efficient at wasting time,” said Schrimsher wryly. But she wouldn’t go back to less tech-filled days.

“As far as resources, we have the world at our fingertips…quite literally,” she said. If she doesn’t understand something in a lecture, she’ll look it up on the spot or e-mail the instructor. Mostly likely, she’ll get a response within an hour. She regularly sends group e-mails with questions and suggestions to classmates.

“We do anything we need to do online,” said Shuddhadeb Ray, another second-year student. “Even when we meet in person to study, we have our computers open.” Ray has yet to visit a professor during office hours. He uses e-mail instead.

“Technology has made our social lives a lot more inclusive, as well,” Ray said. “If you’re going out to a game, you can send out an e-mail to everyone and 20 or 30 people might show up.”

The opportunities to share information have fostered scholastic cooperation among students, too.

“We are a giant team as opposed to a giant competition,” said Schrimsher. “Everyone has access to the same range of resources.”

The new connectedness isn’t without pitfalls, though.

“The constant communication can be overwhelming. If you are a distractible student, you can lose hours on MySpace or e-mail,” said Alice Carrott, KUMC’s director of educational support services, who admits she comes back a day early from vacations just to delete e-mails.

And despite the fact that technology is a tool that has the potential to bring people together, in many ways, it can be isolating too.

“You are more networked to people through e-mail and the Web, but physically less close,” said Schrimsher. “It’s more impersonal. You have a lot of people you communicate with, but seldom see.”

In the end, with all of the technological amenities to which students have access, it comes down to what many consider to be a good, overall philosophy of life: everything in moderation. +