Post 10: GroupMe

When people talk about how the internet is changing our society, it usually has a negative connotation attached to it. While I know that the internet has found ways to change us in some not so great ways (i.e. social media addiction), I think it has helped me exponentially in the academic setting. This year I’ve had to write several papers that have required massive amounts of research. Because of the internet, I didn’t have to spend several hours looking through a library to find the books that I need. With a simple search on the UMN library site or google scholar, thousands of relevant articles were at my disposal. And even if I wanted to read an actual book, the UMN library search engine still helped me easily find a relevant book and rent it. The internet can be pretty cool, especially in the academic setting for nerds like me.


What has really stood out to me in terms of an academic setting is the ability for social media and the internet to enhance group work. For this class alone, the internet has made group work and group communication so much easier and more convenient. We tried to do it “old school” in the beginning with just emails, but when that ultimately wasn’t quick or sufficient, we switched over to GroupMe. Our communication and collaboration has been pretty effortless since. GroupMe and the internet in general allows for group work on everyone’s time. I know how busy I can be, so thinking about trying to coordinate an actual time to meet up every time we wanted to get something done would be an absolute mess. Now I’m not saying that meeting in person isn’t the easier way to communicate (you can’t really beat face to face conversations), but GroupMe allows us to stay in contact even with our busy schedules. Without it, there is no way we could have survived the background reports or the debates. In addition to GroupMe, I have to give an even bigger shoutout to Google Docs. Being able to collaborate from a distance was probably one of the smartest inventions (in my opinion) that google has created. In short, I know there are some pretty big downfalls to our technological age, but in the era of teamwork and collaboration in the academic and working world, the internet is one of our biggest assets.