This Ain't Your Father's College Experience. Hell, it isn't even mine!

Today began the final five days of our Emerging Instructional Technologies class. We're all here in Cedar Falls for the week, 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM, with lots of outside of class networking. Some of us are staying in the dorms so we can extend the quality time that we start in the lab.

It's been twenty-five years since I've lived in a dorm, and quite honestly, the room I've been assigned is eerily reminiscent to N270 Hillcrest at the University of Iowa. 1930's era construction, sink, bed, desk, dresser and window. (OK, I do have AC which is a nice touch, but otherwise not much different.) Some inner part of me is giddy about it - or was until I had to unstack the desks and dismantle the second bed so I could move around the room. Still, it was OK - setting up a new space for academic pursuit, sans posters of REM and The Replacements. The coup de grace was the Internet connection, the very lifeline to our course work and material.

That isn't working tonight. Seriously.

I'll spare everyone the rant of looking for any signal - three of us are at The Other Place on the Hill in Cedar Falls where the wi-fi is working, the pizza is hand-tossed and beer is cold - and just cut to the chase, which isn't a rant. There is a team of professionals here at UNI who are dedicated to making sure that every student has access to the tools of technology. Wireless access, dorm access, whatever. They do it day in and day out, and quickly.

Stand by for the cliche: when I was in college, the technical folks were either data entry people or the people who manned the computer labs - computer labs that had second generations Macs and PC's. Oh, the horrors. I suppose when my dad went to college, the tech people were likely telecommunications upkeep technicians - I'm guessing, of course, but I'd bet that I'm close.

The dorm rooms may not have changed, save for that little CAT 5 jack on the wall, but the way we deliver and receive our information is completely different - and better. Today's class was spent working with Twitter, Google Dogs, Skype, Diigo - and that was all before 3:00 PM. What we can do with our information - gathering, organizing, sharing, creating, saving - is like never before. What will the 2010 graduate think of her graduate experience in 2035?

I'm hoping the internet in her dorm is working by then.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/litlnemo/3263025568/