A Glimpse of Paris

My daughter has settled in Paris for the spring semester, arriving two weeks ago. She is staying in a lovely private home arranged by the American University there as a part of an exchange program with U.C. Berkeley. What an experience for her - I’m envious!

So what does this have to do with a blog on technology? Read on.

In preparation for her trip there, we tried to find out if she would have some kind of broadband access from her apartment, hoping that we could sign her up for a VOIP phone number and hook in the adapter there so she could call home for free and vice versa. But of course we soon found out that broadband was not available, in fact, it is apparently not nearly as common a thing in private homes there. So, we told her to start looking for cheap calling cards.

She also started wondering about how she was going to get her assignments. At Berkeley, everyone is online - everyone. They sign up for classes online, get their assignments, turn in their assignments, they collaborate in groups online for projects and they communicate with their professors online. They even take tests and quizzes online in some cases. The internet is totally integrated into the school experience and every student is expected to have access to a computer and the internet.

No so at the American University in Paris. Here they don’t even have a system for the students to sign up for classes online. It’s all done on paper, so you don’t know what classes are open or not until you submit your requests in person. Seems pretty archaic to me. So at this university, the students get their assignments in lecture, turn in their assignments on paper the same way, and make appointments to see the professor via phone. It’s all quite traditional and civilized and I suppose there is nothing wrong with it from an educational perspective. But it is fascinating to me that Berkeley is so far ahead technologically. After all, one expects the major capitals of the world to be at the forefront of technology, or at least close, and the large universities in those cities to be examples for all to follow.

So, on her third day there, my daughter noticed an internet cafe a block from her apartment, and resigned herself to going there to check her e-mail and tell us when she would call. Apparently this is how a great many people in Paris use the internet. We still have them in the U.S. but they are rapidly becoming obsolete.

But then something extraordinary happened. For some reason my daughter decided to move her computer closer to the window in her room and voila’ a window popped up on her screen saying that her laptop had found a wireless network. Apparently the college, which is about a half block away has a wireless network broadcasting with a strong signal. She clicked “ok” and she was online! No authentication whatsoever.

How I found out about all this is I got an e-mail from her all excited that she is online. She was experiencing definite signs of internet withdrawal, but now everything is right with the world again. Now we can chat online and exchange pictures daily using Picasa and Hello (both excellent and free thanks to Google) and the phone bills look they may now be manageable.

As the title of this post says, this is only a glimpse of Paris, and I suspect that the city is really much more technologically advanced than these comments would suggest. It will be interesting to follow my daughter’s education in French culture and to see how such a fiercely nationalistic country steeped in tradition deals with the pressures of ever-changing technology. I will post an update in a few months as more data flows across the Atlantic.