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study abroad!

Sorry for the lack of posts. I was on holiday break, but I came up with tons of unfinished posts that I will eventually finish.

I'm in Paris right now, so for the next 10 weeks I will be looking at social networking in the international student's eyes. Tons of new problems. How do I keep touch with my family and friends back home? How should I keep in touch with my new friends abroad? If I don't have a cell phone, what is the best way to stay connected with my friends abroad? If I'm party of a group of students studying abroad, what is the best way to broadcast and/or organize events? How do you find the most happening places in your new home?

Above are some of the most common questions asked by students of the UChicago Social Sciences Program in Paris. I had to contemplate the same thing. As I refuse to be ripped off by my U.S. carrier for making mobile phone calls in France, I decided to take advantage of my unlocked mobile phone and sign up for a prepaid sim card (Orange Mobicarte) in France. Figuring that 35 Euros would be enough for at least a month (I hope), I now have a way to connect with other students in my program. Some students have opted to get the prepaid sim card or rent a cell phone with sim card through a third party agency. For me, I saw that the price of SMS (50 messages for 5 Euro) is much cheaper than a phone call (.55 Euro/min); thus, I figured I would probably use SMS alot more than phone calls. Then again, all incoming calls are free which makes 1 hour worth of making calls a huge amount of time.

Some students even opted not to get a mobile phone. These students figure that they will probably be around students with mobile phone, so they bought international calling cards to stay in touch with friends and family from home. Another trend I noticed is the number of people with Skype or Google Talk accounts. 100% of the students in our group brought laptops, and we all have wi-fi access in our dorms. Given the incredibly low cost (sometimes zero) cost of making calls over these programs, many students have posted their user IDs of these account types in their facebook profiles in order for their friends and family to stay in touch.

As our program has just started, there is a feeling of camaraderie within the group. As most students in our social sciences program have little or no knowledge of French, it became very apparent that we would be together for most of the trip. The question is what would be the best way to organize and broadcast events or outings to such a large group. Suggestions included creating a facebook group or a email listhost. Others included broadcasting ad hoc SMS messages to announce locations and meeting places. I wished that we had a GPS system, so I hope to experiment with my 10 minutes of internet time to see if "Orange World" allow such a function.

Above all, students are still driven by cost. There is still a number of students that opted out of cell phones together in order to save the 50 Euros in getting activated in France. Some didn't know the difference between GSM and CDMA, or what an "unlocked" phone really is. From my understanding, most just want to have a phone that makes calls and sends/receives text messages from their family and friends. It seems like extra features like GPS positioning and contact statuses were not in the minds of the students. Of course, I could attest to the number of times when we wish we had a virtual guide whenever we try to navigate through Paris, and I've only been here for two days. Ease of use and price are definitely big characteristics I noticed to study-abroad students.

posted by Koh @ 8:57 AM