Work Time Wasted With Worthless Wi-Fi
The Pony Express Editorial Board
The Pony Express Editorial Board
As a school, we depend so heavily on the Wi-Fi connection, for daily lessons, completing online assignments and classwork or creating content for the school community. However, completing all of those things becomes a lot harder without a stable connection throughout the day.
Since the start of the school year, the internet connection hasn’t always been on top, yet more recent Wi-Fi blackouts, however brief, have been becoming more prevalent and a liability.
Having unreliable Wi-Fi is just plain frustrating as students, because aren’t we in Silicon Valley? The rumored hub and leaders of technological advancements? We are among the top 10% of public schools in California. So why is it that we can’t even boot up a Canvas page sometimes? It’s become a bigger headache for students, teachers and staff alike, yet it stays out of our control as we sit anxious, stressed and helpless waiting for a screen to load, not even a dinosaur game to entreat us for the school’s distributed laptops because they’ve been shut off.
In our journalism class, computers are essential to our line of work as we type out our articles on Google Docs before they go on to old MacBooks where we use InDesign. Without a stable internet connection, there isn’t much we can do since almost every step of writing and publishing the newspaper involves Wi-Fi. The risks are exponentially heightened as we approach deadlines when we already have enough on our plates.
On campus, two Wi-Fi servers have been maintaining the balance between the staff’s “SanJoseUnifed” and the economy class seat “SJUSDguest” for general use. The former was kept to ensure a faster bandwidth for educators to use without thousands of students' phones and computers weighing it down. But even now that connection has stooped to the lower levels of the default school Wi-Fi that students are connected to, hindering productivity in classrooms.
There are too many moments when teachers are forced to resort back to whiteboards because of foiled lesson plans by Wi-Fi or when students have to type up essays or complete assignments on small smartphone screens because their computers wouldn’t load. Both situations represent an oversight on the school’s job to ensure an effective learning environment for its students.
As administrators are trying to resolve the problem, students are asked to ration their connections in the classroom and to only use one of their personal devices at a time. Whether that be a phone or computer, it could help the Wi-Fi improve a little bit. While convincing the entire student body on campus to follow through with these requests might be tricky, it’s all that we can do in our control to release the stress on the power grid.
It’s hard to comprehend that our school doesn’t have high-quality Wi-Fi since most students, teachers and staff have their own personal devices in today's society. Technology is a vital part of our daily lives to stay connected, have access and stay on task. Times are changing, we are no longer just using paper and pencil, we are using every online resource you can think of. There needs to be a change made to have better internet for every person on campus because with the way most classes function, having working Wi-Fi should be the first concern.
Since the start of the school year, the internet connection hasn’t always been on top, yet more recent Wi-Fi blackouts, however brief, have been becoming more prevalent and a liability.
Having unreliable Wi-Fi is just plain frustrating as students, because aren’t we in Silicon Valley? The rumored hub and leaders of technological advancements? We are among the top 10% of public schools in California. So why is it that we can’t even boot up a Canvas page sometimes? It’s become a bigger headache for students, teachers and staff alike, yet it stays out of our control as we sit anxious, stressed and helpless waiting for a screen to load, not even a dinosaur game to entreat us for the school’s distributed laptops because they’ve been shut off.
In our journalism class, computers are essential to our line of work as we type out our articles on Google Docs before they go on to old MacBooks where we use InDesign. Without a stable internet connection, there isn’t much we can do since almost every step of writing and publishing the newspaper involves Wi-Fi. The risks are exponentially heightened as we approach deadlines when we already have enough on our plates.
On campus, two Wi-Fi servers have been maintaining the balance between the staff’s “SanJoseUnifed” and the economy class seat “SJUSDguest” for general use. The former was kept to ensure a faster bandwidth for educators to use without thousands of students' phones and computers weighing it down. But even now that connection has stooped to the lower levels of the default school Wi-Fi that students are connected to, hindering productivity in classrooms.
There are too many moments when teachers are forced to resort back to whiteboards because of foiled lesson plans by Wi-Fi or when students have to type up essays or complete assignments on small smartphone screens because their computers wouldn’t load. Both situations represent an oversight on the school’s job to ensure an effective learning environment for its students.
As administrators are trying to resolve the problem, students are asked to ration their connections in the classroom and to only use one of their personal devices at a time. Whether that be a phone or computer, it could help the Wi-Fi improve a little bit. While convincing the entire student body on campus to follow through with these requests might be tricky, it’s all that we can do in our control to release the stress on the power grid.
It’s hard to comprehend that our school doesn’t have high-quality Wi-Fi since most students, teachers and staff have their own personal devices in today's society. Technology is a vital part of our daily lives to stay connected, have access and stay on task. Times are changing, we are no longer just using paper and pencil, we are using every online resource you can think of. There needs to be a change made to have better internet for every person on campus because with the way most classes function, having working Wi-Fi should be the first concern.