Hey, all! After two days of no WiFi last week, I approached my admin and requested flash drives for all our teachers and the opportunity to lead our next PD day. I’m calling it “No WiFi, Now What?” Our district is one-to-one with iPads and for a while was hyper-focused on most assignments being completed through Canvas. Although they’ve relaxed that a bit, our students access most textbooks and assignments through their devices. We have BenQs, no document cameras, no projectors. Currently even our copier is unusable when our internet is down. We are a school of 950 students. What would be your best tips for teachers planning for such outtages?
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If you have a tv in the room that is big enough, use a HDMI cord to directly connect the laptop to the tv. I’m currently subbing, and I just bring my own cord, use my cell phone hot spot so I have internet for my laptop, a scanner to scan paper activities into the laptop, and I don’t rely on the schools’ WiFi anymore.
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Our internet went out a few times a few years ago- so I created a “non- internet lesson” for each unit and made copies ahead of time and put everything in a file. They are mostly mapping activities (analyzing and making)- but I can pull them out in case things go out again.
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I have a keychain flash drive I keep an install of PortableApps on. It has most of the main office software or compatible freeware and boots on a Windows computer from the flash drive with no installation. I keep backups of most of my instructional slides and reused handouts on it just in case, as well as a couple Oh Shit assignments for those days when everything fails. I teach English, so I’ve got a couple generic poetry lessons that work in a pinch from a slideshow.
There is no modern option. They need to focus on improving their IT infrastructure unless they want to go buy overhead projectors and paper textbooks right now.
Teachers should not be expected to deal with infrastructure problems like this. That’s the district’s failure.
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