Canadian schools relying increasingly on the Internet, but costs are spiralling out of control
School District 43, which serves the Tri-Cities region of the Lower Mainland, is facing a problem that could be coming up in districts country wide: Internet resources are dwindling, because students are using it so much.
Internet use in schools keeps reaching new highs in Canadian schools, and districts are running out of bandwidth. Always strapped for cash, this means many schools may need to curb their use.
Kuhn [Brian Kuhn, manager of information services for School District 43] laid out the problem before SD43 trustees with a presentation that used internet and video to explain how ubiquitous the internet has become in schools and at the board office.
Provincial exams are now online, as is student data; the district is moving to paperless budgeting and cross-catchment and permission forms are now available on the district’s web portal My43, Kuhn said. The internet is now embedded in the curriculum and students are creating their own videos, blogs and discussion groups while teachers are using interactive white boards, and educational software, classroom literacy and library programs that they download from the internet.
All this traffic is slowing down the network, Kuhn said, and while the province is funding an upgrade of the PLNet, tripling its capacity, it’s merely tinkering. Something more drastic — and expensive — is needed to handle the 9,000 computers and other personal laptops and handheld devices that are now in schools.
“The slowness, it’s terrible,” Kuhn said, and he illustrated his point with a video made by Maillard middle school students that was tweeted on Twitter and uploaded to YouTube that stressed the importance of being “connected” and the difficulties students and teachers face when internet connections are slow.
The Internet will remain an important part of public school education as long as it remains relevant in today’s modern careers and life in general. Students need to keep receiving education about the Internet, or they face a significant disadvantage once they leave school. Either schools need to find the resources to keep Internet education as part of the curriculum, or government needs to start providing the necessary resources.
The problem is bad enough in School District 43, a suburban district; imagine how bad it is for rural schools, where the Internet is so much more expensive, or not available at all. Just another reason for high-speed internet in rural areas, if you ask me; do it for the kids.
