More than 1,000 Foothill students were shut out of the school’s guest wireless network Monday for the first time since wireless began two years ago, as administration moved to try to speed up bandwidth for teacher and classroom devices.

The guest network will remain inaccessible to students until the bandwidth is increased, which has been promised since May and may be imminent according to district and county officials.

Students and staff have been frustrated by the noticeable slowdown of Foothill’s internet connection over the last few weeks, a situation that has become progressively worse since the beginning of the school year.

The Ventura Unified School District has been “utilizing 100 percent of our bandwidth during the time school is in session,” said Julie Judd, the district’s chief technology officer, in an email to the Dragon Press.

There are approximately 500 school-owned iPads and Chromebooks operating in Foothill classrooms this year, all purchased with parent donations. There are another 250 PCs located throughout campus.

Teacher devices are on one wireless network, while school-owned student devices are on a separate network. Both of these networks will remain unaffected.

Foothill’s website states that the school provides “campus-wide wireless open to all staff and students,” and a majority of Foothill students bring personal devices to school for use on the guest network.

This statement is now untrue, because students cannot access the internet at Foothill with their own phones, laptops, or tablets unless they use their own data plans.

Senior Emily Shaydayi said guest Wi-Fi was her only way to access the internet on her mobile device.

“I don’t have data. I only have an iPod. So if I want to use [my iPod] for any reason whatsoever, and they don’t give us the password, then I can’t,” she said.

Teachers expressed frustration about the slow internet speed.

“You’re having valuable classroom time wasted just sitting there watching the web browser not go anywhere,” said Richard Geib, social studies and English teacher, who received a class set of 12 Chromebooks last month.

“Slow internet access cuts into the muscle and the bone of actually teaching, when you can’t get things done that you want to get done for educational purposes,” he said.

Staff reports that internet seems faster after guest Wi-Fi shut down

The administration hoped that by limiting the data that students access on their personal devices for services like music streaming, gaming and texting, bandwidth might be freed up for the other  networks.

However, district technology staff told Foothill administrators this week that they don’t believe shutting students out of the guest network will improve the situation. They said that because the district is using 100 percent of its bandwidth, other schools’ data would continue to hit capacity.

Yet fifteen of 17 Foothill staff  who responded to a survey emailed to them by technology coordinator Melissa Wantz on Wednesday reported an increase in internet speed since the guest Wi-Fi shutdown this week.

Eleven of 12 teachers who responded prefer to continue to ban guest wireless if it increases the speed of the staff computers, which they say are vital to providing lessons to students.

“It’s ironic because we have all these digital tools that we can use, all the Chromebooks and the [iPad] minis and we try to make our lessons more digital,” said social sciences teacher Claire Adams.

“And again, the irony is that we can’t do this because things won’t stream or upload so we’re having to do things the old school way.”

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Demand for bandwidth exceeds ability to deliver

The demand for bandwidth has been increasing at a rate of 60 percent per year and has exponentially increased this year, said Steve Carr, chief technology officer at the Ventura County Office of Education (VCOE).

The increase in bandwidth is largely due to the movement of resources from servers to cloud-based programs.

“We’re a Google district now, so I have 3,500 active, concurrent Google users. That doesn’t include Foothill, because you guys are on your own Google domain,” Judd said.

“So, just Google alone, and then you have iPads, and they maintain a connection to the App Store all the time, whether they’re being used or not, if they’re powered on, they are utilizing wireless sources.”

Judd recommends iPads be shut down when not being used. Another alternative is setting iPads in “airplane mode” so they cannot connect.

The slower internet speed is also due to the significant increase of mobile devices throughout the district, from approximately 3,000 to more than 8,000 in 18 months.

“There’s all sorts of issues with personal devices. When kids are taking advantage of the access and the time, it’s not just bandwidth, it’s also classroom distraction.” — Conni Carr, Foothill teacher

The demand is not just in Ventura, but is county wide.

“One of the challenges that we at the county office have been fighting is that the demand is growing faster than both we can deliver, as well as the K-12 high speed network can deliver, and CENIC (Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California),” Carr said.

CENIC is a statewide network that provides connectivity to schools through consortiums such as the Superintendent of Schools Office. This bandwidth is than delegated to Ventura Unified and all other public school districts in Ventura County.

The situation could be worse.

Carr said he attended a meeting Tuesday in Sacramento which addressed over 304 schools in California that have no wireless at all.

“There is a statewide effort to try and connect these 300 schools that are way out in these really challenging geographical locations that have no access,” he  said.

Ventura Unified to see increased speed with new system

Previously the county schools had been using microwaves to transmit bits and bytes, but the demand began to overpower the physical capacity of these systems.

They turned to fiber optic cables, which can transfer a lot more data.

When fully finished, the new system will deliver 1GBps (gigabytes per second) to Ventura Unified versus the current 300MBps (megabytes per second), increasing the bandwidth by more than 200 percent.

The installation was more difficult than in other areas of the county  because of Ventura Unified’s unusual geography, Carr said.

However, the main reason for the delay in delivery of the increased wireless is simply “a mix-up in the ordering.” The county relies on the Texas-based telecommunications company AT&T, which must make engineering configurations to the system.

“It has just taken longer and we are frustrated with it, but we are really close to resolution,” Carr said. “The fiber is in. Electronics are there. It is really an internal provisioning thing.”

Carr said he expects the system to be activated by mid-next week. However, Ventura Unified school officials have been expecting resolution to the issue since early July.

When contacted multiple times by the Dragon Press, AT&T media relations responded via email that they are “investigating the issue.” No further comments or explanations were provided.

Bandwidth speed to still be slower than guidelines recommend

While an improvement, the planned  increase to 1 GBps for Ventura Unified may not be nearly enough to keep up with demand.

The recommendation for schools is 100 MBps per 1,000 students and staff, according to the nonprofit education technology organization SETDA (State Educational Technology Directors Association).

For a school district the size of Ventura Unified, with about 20,000 students and staff, this should total 2 GBps, twice what is planned. This means that Foothill’s bandwidth speed may be less than half what is needed for efficient digital learning, according to SETDA guidelines.

And that is just a start.

SETDA recommends there be at least 1 GBps per 1,000 students and staff by the 2017-18 school year. This is the minimum bandwidth target according to the chart on page five of the Broadband Imperative, published in November of 2011.

For Ventura Unified, this would mean an increase to 20 GBps, 20 times the new bandwidth speed within three years.

California averages a speed of 40.8 MBps for downloads and 9.1 MBps for uploads, according to Ookla, a private company that offers online broadband testing and web-based network diagnostic applications.

Out of 493 cities in California, Ventura is ranked by Ookla as the 67th fastest for broadband download, with an average 53 MBps.

The Dragon Press tested Foothill’s bandwidth speed from the Ookla website four times. The combined average of the tests were 10.845 MBps for downloads and 1.9675 MBps for uploads. 

This means Foothill’s bandwidth for downloads is a quarter of the California average and that students can access much faster bandwidth outside of school.

Want to test your school’s bandwidth? Click here.

Slow bandwidth is an issue that affects much of the country.

Cloud-services company Akamai ranks countries in its State of the Internet Report from most to least average connection speed.

The United States is ranked 11th out of 56 countries, with an average of 10.5 MBps.

“I empathize with the frustration you guys have felt, and I have tried to express that to Julie [Judd] as best I can and to the teachers and to your principals and to the students,” Carr said.

“We’re not sitting on our hands,” he said.  “We’re trying to do everything we can to provide that service.”

“We might as well be using chalkboards”

Foothill teachers remain concerned.

AP U.S. History teacher Dan Fitz-Patrick said right now neither students nor teachers can use technology effectively in the classroom.

“It’s almost as if we’ve gone back in time. We might as well be using chalkboards,” he said.

Yearbook and EDA teacher Connie Carr (no relation  to Steve Carr) said her yearbook classes have suffered because of the slow internet speed.

The software that the students use to create the yearbook is cloud-based, so the Wi-Fi problems have been slowing down their workflow.

She noticed that students streaming music from their mobile phones may be contributing to the problem.

“There’s all sorts of issues with personal devices. When kids are taking advantage of the access and the time, it’s not just bandwidth, it’s also classroom distraction,” she said.

EDA teacher Kristen Pelfrey said students need to think about whether their actions comply with the district’s Acceptable Use Policy, which prohibits non-educational uses of the guest internet, such as music streaming.

Foothill’s revised 9th Grade Project may also soon become frustrating, Carr said.  The entire freshmen class will be creating  video documentaries about the agriculture industry beginning in January, and the  video editing program is cloud-based, using a paid platform called WeVideo.

“If the internet speed is doing what it’s doing, it’s going to make it frustrating,” she said. “I’ve got my fingers crossed.”

Fitz-Patrick is equally worried.

“We chose to work at Foothill like you chose to go here, and we kinda have certain expectations that we can accomplish goals with Wi-Fi,” Fitz-Patrick said.

“It’s not a novelty here, it’s a tool.”

Background Photo Credit: Dan Fitz-Patrick (used with permission)