Fire brings down school internet

SCHOOLS across the county were thrown into chaos and left struggling to
teach pupils when their internet connection went down on Wednesday.
Secondary and primary schools across the Wycombe district found themselves
in difficulty when they could not use their computers for internet research,
interactive white boards or to access emails.

The problem started on Tuesday night when the SuperJANET internet pipe,
based in London, failed. It is believed this happened because of a fire. It
was still not working as we went to press yesterday. All local education
authorities, including Buckinghamshire County Council (BCC), get their
internet connection from the pipe, which provides the world wide web to
schools through the Bucks Grid For Learning.

Wycombe High School, in Marlow Road, was without the internet from noon
onwards on Wednesday, and Cressex Community School in Holmers Lane reported
having an intermittent connection. Graeme Kilner, headteacher at Highworth
Combined School, in Highworth Close, High Wycombe, said teachers' lessons
had been disrupted as they had not been able to use their interactive white
boards - which can be linked to the internet - and pupils could not do any
web- based research.

He added: "My staff at this very minute are replanning their lessons for
this afternoon, to either teach the same content but in a less effective
way, or in some cases they'll have to do something else. "It's just a big
frustration for them. A lot of my work comes from emails, from suppliers,
from staff, all that's stopped. "We have a project going on with a school
the other side of the world, that interactivity's not there. "I'm not
grumbling. "I'm simply saying I'm really missing this service and I'm
surprised that, because it's knocked out in so many schools, there weren't
systems in place to compensate."

Mr Kilner added it was frustrating for all the staff as they did not know
when the connection would be back, and so did not how to plan their lessons.
He said: "It's a question of re-jigging the lessons until it comes back."

Jill Hemmings, BCC spokesman, said council staff themselves were unsure as
to why the connection disappeared.She added: "We seem to be the only one, or
very few areas, that still have no internet connection.

"Engineers are working on it and they hope to have it fixed by this
afternoon Thursday."

---------- end article----------

It this what schooling is nowadays? Whatever happened to books, paper and
whiteboard with pens? Its all very well them using technology in classes
but when they have absolutely no backup plans for lessons in case it fails
then its a very poor system indeed.

The teachers knew what they are studying for the day, they should have had
books at the ready. Are they not that knowledgeable that they cannot even
use a whiteboard and pen to teach the days lessons? FFS

Beck wrote:
> It this what schooling is nowadays? Whatever happened to books, paper
> and whiteboard with pens? Its all very well them using technology in
> classes but when they have absolutely no backup plans for lessons in
> case it fails then its a very poor system indeed.

Thats what I was thinking, reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Lisa
stole all the "Teachers Edition" books making the teachers useless!

"Great Eastern" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:45a7796e$0$27093$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Beck wrote:
>> It this what schooling is nowadays? Whatever happened to books, paper
>> and whiteboard with pens? Its all very well them using technology in
>> classes but when they have absolutely no backup plans for lessons in case
>> it fails then its a very poor system indeed.
>
> Thats what I was thinking, reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Lisa
> stole all the "Teachers Edition" books making the teachers useless!

LOL I did not see that but can well imagine.

"Beck" <beck@none> wrote in message
news:45a7757c$0$8727$(E-Mail Removed)...
> SCHOOLS across the county were thrown into chaos and left struggling to
> teach pupils when their internet connection went down on Wednesday.
> Secondary and primary schools across the Wycombe district found themselves
> in difficulty when they could not use their computers for internet
> research, interactive white boards or to access emails.
>

Sounds like someone didn't understand the basic principles behind the
internet, and actually set up a hierarchical private communications
structure.

A single link or node failure (or even multiple failures) will not cripple
the real world internet, which was originally designed to carry on working
after a nuclear war!

On Friday, in article <(E-Mail Removed)>
(E-Mail Removed) "R. Mark Clayton" wrote:

> "Beck" <beck@none> wrote in message
> news:45a7757c$0$8727$(E-Mail Removed)...
> > SCHOOLS across the county were thrown into chaos and left struggling to
> > teach pupils when their internet connection went down on Wednesday.
> > Secondary and primary schools across the Wycombe district found themselves
> > in difficulty when they could not use their computers for internet
> > research, interactive white boards or to access emails.
> >
>
> Sounds like someone didn't understand the basic principles behind the
> internet, and actually set up a hierarchical private communications
> structure.
>
> A single link or node failure (or even multiple failures) will not cripple
> the real world internet, which was originally designed to carry on working
> after a nuclear war!

It certainly seems odd that it seems to have taken down services, like
the whiteboards, that don't obviously depend on off-site features.

--
David G. Bell -- SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.

"I am Number Two," said Penfold. "You are Number Six."

"R. Mark Clayton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
message news:(E-Mail Removed)
> "Beck" <beck@none> wrote in message
> news:45a7757c$0$8727$(E-Mail Removed)...
> > SCHOOLS across the county were thrown into chaos and
> > left struggling to teach pupils when their internet
> > connection went down on Wednesday. Secondary and
> > primary schools across the Wycombe district found
> > themselves in difficulty when they could not use their
> > computers for internet research, interactive white
> > boards or to access emails.
>
> Sounds like someone didn't understand the basic
> principles behind the internet, and actually set up a
> hierarchical private communications structure.

Sounds more like someone didn't understand the basic principles behind
education, i.e. teachers who know what they're talking about standing up
in front of a class.

Ivor

"Ivor Jones" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
>
> "R. Mark Clayton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
> message news:(E-Mail Removed)
>> "Beck" <beck@none> wrote in message
>> news:45a7757c$0$8727$(E-Mail Removed)...
>> > SCHOOLS across the county were thrown into chaos and
>> > left struggling to teach pupils when their internet
>> > connection went down on Wednesday. Secondary and
>> > primary schools across the Wycombe district found
>> > themselves in difficulty when they could not use their
>> > computers for internet research, interactive white
>> > boards or to access emails.
>>
>> Sounds like someone didn't understand the basic
>> principles behind the internet, and actually set up a
>> hierarchical private communications structure.
>
> Sounds more like someone didn't understand the basic principles behind
> education, i.e. teachers who know what they're talking about standing up
> in front of a class.
>
> Ivor
>
>


Maybe they employ virtual teachers now!!

(E-Mail Removed) ("David G. Bell") wrote in
news:(E-Mail Removed):

>> Sounds like someone didn't understand the basic principles behind the
>> internet, and actually set up a hierarchical private communications
>> structure.
>>
>> A single link or node failure (or even multiple failures) will not
>> cripple the real world internet, which was originally designed to
>> carry on working after a nuclear war!
>
> It certainly seems odd that it seems to have taken down services, like
> the whiteboards, that don't obviously depend on off-site features.

It comes down to a couple of problems. Both the network resiliency and
the configuration of hardware such as whiteboards.

Whiteboards can function stand-alone, but as mentioned in the original
article they can also be linked to Internet based content. In this case,
those linked to Internet based content could not operate and the teachers
probably didn't have a clue how to switch them to local content - which
could possibly be a benefit as things go wrong when people start to
fiddle..

Oh and the theory that the 'real world' Internet can route round problems
is a very good one, except what actually happens is that routes get
confused and budgets mean that things are often stuffed through the same
cable as opposed to being properly resilient.

Take out a few buildings in London, or a few Cornwall cable landing
points and the UK Internet and many web services would be completely
screwed for quite some time.

--
Colin
*Drop DEAD from the email address to reply*

>> "R. Mark Clayton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
>> message news:(E-Mail Removed)
>>> "Beck" <beck@none> wrote in message
>>> news:45a7757c$0$8727$(E-Mail Removed)...
>>> > SCHOOLS across the county were thrown into chaos and
>>> > left struggling to teach pupils when their internet
>>> > connection went down on Wednesday. Secondary and
>>> > primary schools across the Wycombe district found
>>> > themselves in difficulty when they could not use their
>>> > computers for internet research, interactive white
>>> > boards or to access emails.

Discounting the need for live Internet use, most well designed schools would
have continued as though nothing had happened. Most schools have mail
servers and account servers situated within the building. They also have
cache servers storing frequently accessed web pages to cut down on data flow
in and out of the school. Pupils and staff would be able to logon, access
files, operate white boards without a problem. As for email emergencies we
just use dial-up to batch send / receive emails and circumvent the
SuperJANET university / research labs superhighway. Of course a temp dial
up is no good for 100+ pupils trying to view the latest Utube videos ;-)

"Gio" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:eo8kur$79g$(E-Mail Removed)...
>>> "R. Mark Clayton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
>>> message news:(E-Mail Removed)
>>>> "Beck" <beck@none> wrote in message
>>>> news:45a7757c$0$8727$(E-Mail Removed)...
>>>> > SCHOOLS across the county were thrown into chaos and
>>>> > left struggling to teach pupils when their internet
>>>> > connection went down on Wednesday. Secondary and
>>>> > primary schools across the Wycombe district found
>>>> > themselves in difficulty when they could not use their
>>>> > computers for internet research, interactive white
>>>> > boards or to access emails.
>
> Discounting the need for live Internet use, most well designed schools
> would have continued as though nothing had happened. Most schools have
> mail servers and account servers situated within the building. They also
> have cache servers storing frequently accessed web pages to cut down on
> data flow in and out of the school. Pupils and staff would be able to
> logon, access files, operate white boards without a problem. As for email
> emergencies we just use dial-up to batch send / receive emails and
> circumvent the SuperJANET university / research labs superhighway. Of
> course a temp dial up is no good for 100+ pupils trying to view the latest
> Utube videos ;-)
>
as happens in normal schools like our :-)

isn't it amazing that because everybody has been to school they are all
educational experts - a function often dependent on age lol. Just the same
people who drive cars don't seem to think they are expert mechanics. I
would expect staff to re-plan lessons although how this implies that they
don't know what they are doing beggars belief in fact the opposite would be
the logical thought here. I think that education appears to have moved on
from the view implied by some posters in this thread - true a lesson based
on traditional chalk and talk would not need replanning but one in which the
student was actually trying to research/understand for themselves which
relied on external resources needs much organisation and arrangement in
advance

--
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<.·°·. NIK .·°·.>
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