For the second day in a row, students and staff throughout Frisco ISD were hit with a lack of network connection on Monday and Tuesday. 

The FISD technology department first became aware of the sporadic internet outages after receiving multiping alerts.

“Campus techs are notified via email or Twitter that we have lost network connectivity,” technology support specialist Brittony Guillen said. “We call them multiping alerts which sometimes means that someone is trying to hack our system, other times it can be a power outage, a fiber line cut or that the service provider has gone down. The district technology department will update us with emails notifying us when the system is down or up and the Area Tech’s or District Tech’s can help notify the campus when it is back up and running.” 

For environmental science teacher Jamie Berendt, this meant switching from technology to paper.

“I was supposed to give a quiz on Canvas,” Berendt said. “So I was frantically trying to print quizzes so my first period class was late to their second period class because they were waiting for me to get quizzes printed. It’s such a headache, it’s awful when those computer issues happen. It’s very frustrating.”

However, in some classes on campus such as Business Information Management, technology is an even more vital piece in the curriculum leading teacher Tye Wilkerson to adapt on the fly.

“Basically the issue is that since this is an online course once the internet goes down at all, it takes the course to a complete standstill,” Wilkerson said. “We have to be very fluid in the way we can change. Grab a book, do journal entries, just do homework for other classes since we are not going to be able to do the work in here.”

With no warning when an internet outage could occur, Guillen encourages everyone to stay flexible in their lessons in case of future network issues.

“They’re aggravating but you also have to take a step back and realize where we started from, where we learned from, board and paper,” Guillen said. “You always have to be flexible and have a back-up plan. We can’t always depend on technology even though we thrive on it and need it, at times it can be our worst enemy.”