Since the beginning of the year, students and teachers have encountered frequent problems with the technology at Camas High School (CHS). The slowness of the chromebooks has caused problems and frustration among CHS students.
“If all my class logged into their computers at the same time, at least five of us [would not] have Wi-Fi,” CHS junior Natalie Krause said.
“[CHS’ Internet is] the worst Internet I’ve ever had in my life,” CHS junior River Flanagan said.
“[The Internet] works when I don’t need it to work, but when I need it to work, it’s like ‘um, actually, no, I’m just gonna not cooperate with you right now,’” CHS junior Cadie Lee said.
CHS Spanish teacher Jamie Rodda has been working with the CSD technology department to try to figure out what is causing the slow connectivity.
“Pretty much from the start of the year, [we noticed that] students would lose connection or it would show on their chromebook that they were connected but they couldn’t actually open any new tabs,” Rodda said.
One of the people from the CSD technology department that has been helping Rodda is CSD systems engineer Gary Abrahamsen. He provided further information into the ongoing effort to improve school devices.
“[The Internet] doesn’t seem to be the problem,” Abrahamsen said.
The problem is much more complex than just the Internet connection. The CSD tech department has been diligently looking into different possibilities.
Although a conclusion has not yet been reached, Abrahamsen said that the tech department thinks it could be a problem with the IP addresses. He used the analogy of parking spots to explain.
“Every device on the network gets an IP address– a parking spot,” Abrahamsen said. “If you think about a parking attendant, they hand out parking spots… We have multiple parking lot attendants that do that. Are they working together well? Maybe not. That’s what we’re looking at.”
Abrahamsen also noted that the chromebooks themselves may be part of the issue.
“The chromebooks, every so many days, need to do a reboot in order to get a fresh brain,” Abrahamsen said.
The chromebooks at CHS can get bogged down from overuse. Abrahamsen, along with other members of the CSD tech department, are advising students to frequently restart and shut down their chromebooks in order to keep them running smoothly.
Many students blame CSD for ignorance to the technological issues students face on a daily basis. Abrahamsen clarified that the CSD tech team is doing everything possible to make technology use as easy and efficient as possible for students.
“We don’t want [the technology problems] to happen,” Abrahamsen said. “We want [students] to have a good experience, we want [the chromebooks] to connect every time if at all possible, and that needs to be what people keep in mind.”
Abrahamsen and the rest of the CSD technology department plan to keep exploring possible reasons why the chromebooks may be running slowly.
