This week’s blog I wanted to switch gears. Seeing as Covid-19 has started taking grasp of the world, campus has been essentially closed off. We will now be in a forever different world where we have to go from in class discussion to a “distance learning” format. As discussed by the professor, we will be using Discord as a means of communication for our distance learning efforts. Discords is a very cool tool in my opinion. It not only allows you to connect to anyone in the world with a single click of a button it allows you to really connect. Discord is built on community. This fact alone allows it to go above and beyond other forms of social media. For those of you who are not familiar, Discord has an unlimited amount of servers for just about anything, in this case, we are using it for a classroom. Within discord, there are a set of simple avenues of communication. To start off, there is a simple text chat. In combination with this text chat, there are voice channels. Right off the bat, this allows for multiple people to join a server and engage in a meaningful discussion. In our own regard, we can have a professor give a lecture while students type in the text chat, asking questions, seeking answers to anything they want. I personally have been using discord for a great while, at first I was a skeptic but this is simply miles ahead of other services such as skype or zoom.

In addition to these voice and text channels, Discord allows for users to “Go Live” another instant feature where hundreds of people can view your screen and watch you on your computer, live. In this week, this feature was demonstrated by a fellow classmate playing and streaming Life is Strange. This seemed almost too perfect of a game for this week, right as we settle into Covid-19 new normal, we play a game where life is anything but normal. I personally enjoy using discord for class discussion due to the ease of use and active participation it pushes for all sorts of students, mobile, desktop or even the one presenting.

Having said that, discord also allowed us to get into groups and perform small group talks like we have in class, but we can join anytime we want and not only during class hours like a service such as zoom. This is definitely a strange transition from the classroom, but I think the moral of the story is that discord is very helpful and is a great tool for groups that revolve around community. The times are changing and I hope we can get back to our normal class routine sometime soon, but in the meantime, discord is a great option and without it, this semester would be even more difficult.

Certainly, even several years ago this distance learning would have been unheard of, the semester would have been cancelled, but with the use of modern day tools and resources, we can have a somewhat normal class, online.