[LC BANDUNG] Use Technology to The Fullest: New Normal

Written by: Vanesa Fransiska, William & Yella Dezas Perdani

In this day and age, technology has advanced that suddenly people cannot live without technology which has a meaning to fulfil human life today so that humans can communicate well with one another. Technology has developed from time to time and has had various types, including information technology, transportation technology, communication technology, medical technology, and many more. In addition, there are various examples of technology; transportation technologies such as aeroplanes, electric trains, electric cars, communication technologies such as smartphones, television, radio, medical technology such as sphygmomanometer, ultrasound device, X-Ray device, body thermometer.

Ancient technology is defined as a skill or craft like typewriting, old-fashioned tv, and many more, and of course, if it is compared to today’s technology, it has been much more developed. For example, in the past, there was no such thing as a smartphone that was easy to use as it is right now; even the keyboard still had three letters, not yet a querty-board at this time. Another example is that television was still in black and white; it does not have colours as it does now, even Youtube has not existed back then. In the past, it was also difficult for people to travel because there was no online motorcycle taxi application, but nowadays, people can use applications such as Grab and Gojek. As time goes by, technology develops to be better to support humans in their activities.

Technology itself has many benefits for everyday life that has various benefits in various fields such as medicine, transportation, education, and business. Benefits in the medical field include making it easier for patients to check through tools such as pregnancy via ultrasound, X-Ray tools, thermometers to check the temperature, and many more. Besides, it also makes it easier for doctors to carry out their activities. In the field of transportation itself, the benefits that can be used for people today can enjoy facilities such as electric trains and even now some are using electric cars, making it easier for people to carry out activities. In the field of education, as a student and students are very useful. With technology in education, we as students can get information through the internet, improve learning abilities, and facilitate access to learning, especially during a pandemic like this, everything is online, and finally, in the business field. In the business field itself, you can use it as a marketplace to sell online; it can help us as businessmen, especially during this pandemic, everything is all online. That is the importance of technology for everyone, and the technology will develop for the better in the future.

Nowadays, people cannot easily hold teaching and learning activities face-to-face. With what is happening on our earth, namely with the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID – 19), it is difficult for people to meet, especially if they have to hold teaching and learning activities that are incidentally activities many people involved in it. Now almost all teaching and learning activities are carried out online. Schools, educational institutions, universities are starting to use various kinds of technology to conduct online teaching and learning activities. Video conferencing applications are applications that they commonly use. One of the most popular video conferencing applications today is Zoom. Zoom is a company engaged in the field of communication technology, headquartered in San Jose, California. Zoom was founded by Eric Yuan, a former vice president for Cisco Webex. He left Cisco in April 2011 to start building Zoom, originally named Saasbee, Inc. The company had trouble raising funds in the early days because investors thought the video conference market was already crowded. In 2012, in May to be exact, the company changed its name to Zoom. In 2019, Zoom first became profitable, and at the beginning of early 2020, Zoom’s application usage got a significant global increase after quarantine measures were adopted in response to the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID – 19).

Just like everything, zoom also brings some benefits and also some difficulties. Zoom has many benefits for learning activities. First, Zoom is user-friendly and has an uncomplicated interface. Students have to download the app from Play Store if they use mobile devices or download the app from Zoom’s official website if they are using a Laptop/PC to join a scheduled or ongoing online class. They do not always have to create an account to participate in an online class. Therefore, it is fundamentally easy to use. Second, when compared to similar apps and services, Zoom has the highest maximum participant capacity. Zoom can accommodate up to 1000 participants and will be useful if the school holds events such as graduations or large gatherings. Third, Zoom has some exciting features and productivity tools. For example, virtual backgrounds allow user personalization, promote professionalism and presentability of the teacher or maybe school organization leader. Share screen features allow remote collaboration and interaction during an online class. Besides its benefits, Zoom also brings some disadvantages. Zoom is a reasonably inexpensive application at entry-level, but a free subscription usually is not enough. For example, it only allows 40-minute-long meetings for a free subscription. Most services require an additional subscription, which depends on the school’s plan and could be a problem for schools with fewer financial conditions. Another disadvantage of using Zoom is its need for a high-performance device. Zoom is considerably heavy on system resources. Although it does not consume a large portion of the random-access memory, its high processing demand has power consumption implications. Devices would run low on battery for extended periods of video conferencing.

To sum up, technology does help us, humans, to do our activity, isn’t it! It developed, develops, developing, and will still develop to make our tasks easier from time to time.