504 Bad Gateway

By Laura Segura and Colt Antle

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The Internet is one of the most important things to have in a school to have a positive learning experience. When it comes to daily warm up assignments, everyday computer assignments, and tests like NWEA, SAT it's very important to have a good connection with the internet. Recently Pueblo County High School's internet has been irregular, with computers crashing daily, teachers changing lesson plans, and work becoming late. It causes lots of stress on our faculty, teachers and students. In the Pueblo County area, signals can be hard to reach due to being far out.  Freshman Leann Troutt quotes that “It’s a disturbance when I am very focused on my work and an internet issue comes up, making me lose track.” 

Given how most school districts depend so heavily on technology, to the point where most if not all classes students take are solely revolving around technology, most would assume said technology or programs in use would be more reliable. Programs such as NWEA and College Board have been failing, leaving students stuck in a monotonous loop of loading, refreshing, restarting, signing in, repeat. While some students have been successful with College Board, others have had to go out of their way to communicate with them and alert them of the issue which really shouldn’t be there to begin with. Communication is another problem with accessing the internet. Sometimes IT support systems, and customer service won’t respond to student's or teacher’s complaints, or they just take a long time to get to them

Just recently Judy Fodor, teacher of AP English, Journalism and Yearbook, tried administering a NWEA test to her AP English classes, but had a mountain of trouble to deal with. Most of her students could only manage to get up to question to the first couple of questions, thanks to how the program had been working and  how the internet has been running. “It feels like I am losing critical instructional time with students. It doesn't matter which app or platform we use, there are always several who ‘ ‘can't get on’ and it is frustrating for the student as well - especially when you apply the term ‘test’ to it. I'm sure that causes the students anxiety. It does for me,” said  Fodor. This is all especially irritating given the genuine benefits that online work can offer to students.  For example,  if a student were to fall ill they have access to most of what they missed on their devices. 

When asked if she finds there to be any benefits to having most of school be online Fodor commented,“Yes, there are many benefits. Students need to learn to use technology responsibly and as an educational tool while at school. Our district provides a great service to our students. For every student to have access to the internet is an awesome concept. Limit cell phone usage in the classroom for starters. Almost every student has a cell phone with several apps open all day long, and on their computers while on their phones. It is a lot to expect any school staff member to monitor every individual student's account while at school. They are supposed to be working on assignments, but they are watching videos, and playing games, and chatting with friends, and listening to Spotify. etc. That might be why we can't ‘get on’ the internet.”

Having an irregular connection, with teachers being frustrated with no connection, students assignments becoming late and everything in overall being a huge mess, it is clear connection is a must have in our school.  Fodor encapsulates the struggles and rewards of the dependence PCHS has on favorable connection, “I enjoy online discussion and writing tools, but there is always the plagiarism issue with some. It is too easy to cheat, and it is really easy to spot.” Overall, the internet is a huge need in our school to pursue our education and how teachers conduct their classrooms.