Eanes Independent School District lost WiFi connection on Saturday, Dec. 6; the district then underwent almost a full week of school without the WiFi that was necessary for school-issued iPads and teacher devices. Connection was restored on Friday, Dec. 12 and has been functional ever since.
The week-long outage right before finals heavily affected students, teachers and administrators alike.
“It’s the last real week of the semester,” AP World History teacher Mrs. Johnson-Petrinec said. “We’ve got assessments and essays that are due. It’s just horrible.”
AP Government teacher Jeff Antoon agreed.
Antoon called in for a sub so he could spend the day connected to WiFi at a coffee shop in order to grade assignments.
Tools such as Edpuzzle, Socrative, Wayground, Skyward and Google Classroom were unavailable without WiFi, as were printers and other services. This forced teachers to shift their online assignments and tests onto paper, which caused a dramatic increase in printer demand.
“At first, there was only one of the three printers in the NGC working… And a lot of teachers did not know how to use the printers so I had to teach two or three how to get basic stuff printed,” Johnson-Petrenic said.
Students also had to adapt, as many were accustomed to doing their assignments online and had to adjust to the school’s sudden shift to paper.
“I have dysgraphia so handwriting has always been a challenge,” senior Baird Richert said. “Now that we have to do everything on paper it’s really slowed me down and given me more work to do at home.”
Other students and teachers used their personal hotspots at school to connect their iPads to the internet.
“Teachers don’t seem to care if I use my hotspot as long as I keep my phone in my backpack so that’s what I’m going to do,” senior Henry Fox said.
This hotspot lifeline allowed some students and teachers to continue to access vital resources like Google Classroom or Skyward, albeit with varying levels of effectiveness.
A small majority of students, however, seemed to enjoy the lack of WiFi.
“School has been great without WiFi,” senior Varsha Rachala said. “Most of my teachers just gave up on giving us work so I haven’t had much to do, so I’ve just been talking with friends and studying notes for my finals most of the week.”
Principal Steven Ramsey was impressed by the ability of both students and staff to persevere despite the challenges.
“Teachers did a great job getting attendance in on time even though they had to do it on paper… I’m just proud of the way everyone handled the situation,” Ramsey said.
Administration didn’t share details around the cause of the outage, other than it was a cybersecurity situation, but the issue, whatever it was, has been resolved. Finals are now proceeding with normality.
