Erik, my oldest son, views study abroad as an all-you-can-eat buffet. He went to Germany when he was 16 as a high school exchange student; he did a study abroad through University of Nebraska at Kearney in Rostock, Germany; and now he’s in Seoul, Korea, as part of another UNK study abroad program. (Though this time he’s studying in English rather than the local language. He’s fluent in German, not Korean.)
Over the years, we’ve gotten used to talking with him via Skype. We even “brought him home” for the holidays one year by having him celebrating with us via video on the laptop near the Christmas tree.
So I’ve long realized what a tightly knit world we live in where barriers of time zones, oceans, and continents can be crossed with modern communication technology. But last night the whole picture of what we can do really came into focus.
Erik Skyped us from Seoul, and asked whether he could go to Tokyo for the long holiday weekend. (Apparently it is the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving.) He was on his laptop, but my wife and I were connecting through my iPad. While he could easily find a flight from Seoul to Tokyo, finding a safe and affordable hotel was a bit more of a challenge.
So my wife turned to Facebook and asked a Japanese student living in Minnesota whom she used to tutor to ask where she would stay. An hour or so later, Maki had sent us a link to a nice hotel in Erik’s price range near the Tokyo rail system.
I e-mailed the link to Erik, and this morning we heard that he had all his plans made.
And this is the amazing thing about electronic communication. By using a wide range of online communication tools, including point-to-point video, social networking, e-mail, and the World Wide Web, we were able to help our son set up an international trip working with people across the world, from Nebraska, to Minnesota, to Korea, to Japan. All in less than 12 hours, and all using freely available tools.
It is a small, small world out there.