By Danah Bialoruski
As Ms. Custodio, Film Studies teacher, begins to let her students surf the Internet to use as a resource for their film projects, the students come to a halt.
The WiFi, once again, is not working in the classroom.
Custodio is one of many Lane teachers who rely on Internet to be accessible to the students in the classroom. She says that the Internet will work perfectly on some days but then on others, not one student can get access. Custodio says that this delays projects and interrupts instruction immensely.
“I feel bad when students come to the lab to finish something during their lunch period thinking it will take them ten minutes when it really ends up taking the whole period,” Custodio said.
By the end of November, though, Lane’s wireless network will have been updated with the newest version of wireless configuration, something Lane’s Director of Technology, Bill Miceli, called “wireless 802.11ac.” He said Lane will be the first CPS school with this state-of-the-art technology. Work on the project is scheduled to begin next week and the scheduled completion date is Nov. 22.
Miceli agrees that Lane’s wireless connectivity has been very unreliable.
“We’ve expressed this concern to CPS many times and they’ve kind of just used a band-aid fix in the past,” Miceli said. “We had to go up the chain and complain about it and they’ve finally given us some money to update the access points that we have in the building.”
Lane administrators do not know the total cost for the wireless update since the school is not paying for it. According to Miceli, CPS officials have designated all the money needed for the update.
“They’re just bringing all the hardware over and providing the labor and providing the construction work,” he said.
All the constructive work, like coring and drilling through walls, will be done in the mornings before school starts, so interruption to classes should be minimal.
In previous years, since the wireless connection was so crowded, the administration would not let students have access to it on their phones. Every year, though, the wireless password would be leaked to the students. This would cause the WiFi connection to become even slower.
Once the update is complete, the wireless network will be able to host faculty and students comfortably.
