For five days over Winter Break and the weekend that followed, teachers and students were unable to access grades, email, Moodle, and other resources provided by the Buffalo-Hanover-Montrose Network due to a major network outage.
Head of Technology Josh Swanson said the cause of the disruption has been identified and several steps have already been taken to prevent a similar situation from occurring in the future.
“At the end of December and beginning of January we had [an unplanned outage],” said Swanson. “Several layers of resources were applied to resolve the issues as quickly as possible. Services have now returned to normal operational levels. An analysis is being completed and proactive steps are being taken to limit the cause of this disruption in the future. In this case, that will include increased security and limits to end users access on the network, communication, and training several user groups.”
Over the past five years the demands and use of technology services throughout the school district has grown in exponential bounds. However, students and teachers have discovered many unplanned outages in the Buffalo network, causing many problems for the teachers and staff.
“We rely on technology and communication today as we would infrastructure and trains in the past,” said English teacher Vicki Cary. “When there is an unexpected outage, it’s as crippling to education as a snow day.”
Many teachers rely on the schools network to access its resources for helpful learning tools. Without the network running properly, they’re forced to find alternative lessons to teach their class.
“You never know when the Buffalo network will go down,” said Math Teacher Stacy Eggers. “I rely on my SMART Board to teach my class every day and if the network suddenly crashes, I’m left in a really bad position.”
This isn’t the first year that teachers have experienced many outages. Some teachers have noticed this and decided to stop using it all together.
“With the Buffalo network going down as much as it does, it just shows that technology isn’t reliable,” said History teacher Devin Davidson. “I try to avoid using it whenever I can.”
