College life in the Internet age 1

College life in the Internet age 1 The college campus, long a place of scholarship and frontiers of new technology, is being transformed into a new age of electronics by a fleet of laptops, smartphones and connectivity 24 hours a day. 2 On a typical modern-day campus, where every building and most outdoor common areas offer wireless Internet access, one student takes her laptop everywhere. In class, she takes notes with it, sometimes instant-messaging or emailing friends if the professor is less than interesting. In her dorm, she instant-messages her roommate sitting just a few feet away. She is tied to her smartphone, which she even uses to text a friend who lives one floor above her, and which supplies music for walks between classes. 3 Welcome to college life in the 21st century, where students on campus are electronically linked to each other, to professors and to their classwork 24/7 in an ever-flowing river of information and communication. With many schools offering