Barrington schools overcome Day 1 tech glitch

Technology issue surfaces on first day of distance learning

Posted 3/31/20

At about 10:40 a.m. on Wednesday, March 25, students all across Barrington stared at their computer screens and waited for various web pages to load.

And when the pages failed, frustrations …

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Barrington schools overcome Day 1 tech glitch

Technology issue surfaces on first day of distance learning

Posted

At about 10:40 a.m. on Wednesday, March 25, students all across Barrington stared at their computer screens and waited for various web pages to load.

And when the pages failed, frustrations built.

Was it the wifi?

Was it a bad link?

Was it the Chromebook?

The answers arrived a few minutes later when the district sent out a message explaining the glitch — a server used by the school department's internet provider (Cox Communications) had been overwhelmed with the volume of web traffic.

"Cox has added another server to accommodate the increase of traffic due to distance learning as well as other adjustments to reduce traffic to specific sites," stated the message. "The additional server should eliminate the connection issues we were seeing throughout the day today."

That adjustment appeared to remedy the issue, as Days Two and Three of distance learning in Barrington proceeded more smoothly.

Barrington High School student and member of the district's tech team CJ Hilty had anticipated the problem. In fact, CJ wrote a letter to the editor in last week's Barrington Times explaining the situation a full two days before it surfaced on March 25:

"In order to receive state 'E-Rate' internet funding, Rhode Island public school districts need to demonstrate that they have taken measures to restrict students’ access to sites that contain adult content. To meet this requirement, for the past 3 years, BPS has subscribed to 'ContentKeeper', a service from Cox that funnels all internet traffic through a Cox-owned proxy server. For those past years, the service has consistently hindered internet connectivity at BPS, with students facing dropped connections, sluggish speeds, and unpredictable outages," CJ wrote.

The high school senior offered a possible fix too:

"A more sensible and equally 'E-Rate' compliant filtering solution for student laptops would block sites on the device level. One such service is iBoss, which the district has used in the past. Using a service other than ContentKeeper would also allow the district to use OSHEAN, Rhode Island’s unique institutional network provider, on campus, rather than Cox. OSHEAN is used across the state by many school districts, as well as the Ocean State Libraries Network (including the Barrington Public Library), and prominent higher-education institutions across the State, such as Brown, Roger Williams, and Rhode Island College," he wrote.

CJ said he has also discussed the issue with district officials.

Great effort

Barrington administrators shared emails of thanks with students' parents over the weekend, acknowledging the efforts made by each household.

And in her press briefing on Friday, March 27, Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo also praised the effort of students, parents, teachers and administrators with the distance learning initiative.

“I am so proud of you at the way you’ve handled the distance learning,” she said of students, teachers and parents. “It’s incredible. We’re the only state in the country doing this and you’re doing a great job. God bless every school teacher who’s working extra hard, every teacher’s aide, every parent who’s pulling their hair out … and every student who’s working around the clock to make this happen.”

Distance learning certainly isn’t  “glitch-free,” she said, but “we’re learning how to do it better, especially with kids with special needs.”

About 140,000 students in K-12 schools across Rhode Island are currently learning online. State education officials said Monday that distance learning would continue through the end of April.

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