Schools improvise during four-day loss of Internet connection
By Sylvie Belmond belmond@theacorn.com

Five Moorpark schools were affected by a wireless Internet outage that lasted four days late last month, making it necessary for administrators and teachers to revert to manual systems for some tasks.

"We're sort of finding out just how wonderful technology is when it's working, but since it crept up on us slowly through the years, we haven't realized just how much we depend on it," said Flory Academy Principal Pam Hill.

The lost connection forced the school to reschedule a video conference with NASA.

The temporary outage was also a learning opportunity for the young students at the technology and science magnet school, and some of them even suggested possible ways to fix the problem, the principal said.

"We're all becoming very dependent on technology and connectivity," said Tim Forbes, technical coordinator for the Moorpark Unified School District. Teachers and students rely on the Internet for research and communication at all levels.

Schools affected by the outage used different methods to take attendance and maintain records. Teachers who integrate the Internet with their lessons had to temporarily change their teaching methods, Forbes said.

But overall, he said, the wireless connection has been stable and hasn't been problematic for the district.

"We are very technologybased in all of our operations, so we had to work quickly to get things back up," said Superintendent Ellen Smith.

The district plans to develop redundancies in the system to provide alternative ways of connecting to the web when the main connection is down, she said.

The problem was caused by a faulty radio part, said Forbes. It took several days to fix because the unique part had to be specially ordered.

In addition to Flory Academy, schools affected by the outage

were Moorpark High School, Walnut Canyon Elementary,

Chaparral Middle School and Mesa Verde Middle School.