Daniel Schultz | Bomber Media
An internet outage caused difficulties for students and teachers at all four Kenston schools on Aug. 30 and proved just how much internet connectivity impacts the school day.
Every teacher in the district uses technology in some aspect in their classes, and a sudden internet outage challenges teachers to quickly switch up their lesson plans.
“At first, technology was mostly used by me, required a trip to the computer lab for special activities or virtual labs, and was not used daily. Now, technology is an integral part of my class,” said Dr. Maggie Colicchio, a science teacher at KHS, while reflecting on how her dependence on technology has increased during her teaching career.
During the outage, Dr. Colicchio said she was unable to conduct many of the activities she had planned for her classes that day and it also affected her ability to assess her students’ learning.
“I use technology in my instructional and assessment practices, and it’s super important for data analysis and making sure that all students are grasping the required content,” said Dr. Colicchio.
Internet connectivity is also very important to the students at Kenston.
“When at school, I rely heavily on the internet to complete my work. I usually complete all my notes on my Chromebook instead of on paper,” said Skyler Cieszykowski, a sophomore at KHS. “I also like to meet up with my friends in between classes and the internet being dead didn’t allow me to do that. Not being able to socialize between classes made my school day much more grueling than usual.”
According to KHS technology coordinator Mr. John Molnar, the Aug. 30 outage was caused by a damaged fiber line on a nearby utility pole.
“A crew was dispatched to fix the damaged internet line, but they [had] to let the power company repair the damaged electrical lines first. Once they were able to begin repairs, they found that the fiber line that transports our internet was burned and damaged in five different spots, so they had to run a new fiber line and splice it together,” said Mr. Molnar.
The damage caused the internet at all Kenston buildings to stay down until 12:43 a.m. the next morning.▮
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Daniel Schultz is a student in Multimedia Journalism II and a sophomore at Kenston High School.