Anonymous wrote:It already did once this year. They cancelled all school.

That was a fiber cut by the provider, impacted many end-users not just APS.

It happened today in ACPS. No kids yet. I went to work. No WIFI. Sent a message to families. Drove home. Started class 15 minutes late.

Parents and teachers will do what they've been doing forever, making it work the best we can for the kids!

Anonymous wrote:It already did once this year. They cancelled all school.

It will happen. There have been blackouts on the whole East Coast. I don't think it is just APS.

It already did once this year. They cancelled all school.

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Anonymous wrote:They've been virtual for the whole year and the internet has only collapsed once I think, at the beginning of the year. So why would it start now?

Because some schools will now have 200+ people connected to the school wifi (as opposed to connecting from home). I think its very likely the routers at school will go down, especially if they have the hybrid kids mostly doing things on their ipad still.

They won’t be on iPad as much at school. Mostly for specials.

That is not what we have been told. Maybe you’re talking about one of the younger grades? But kids 3rd and up are concurrent will be on the iPad quite a bit. The teacher will be rotating between small groups so while the teachers with the small group, on the iPad the kids will have to be doing independent work on the iPad.

They do small groups with younger grades as well. I’m sure it’s been accounted for.

I didn’t describe it well. It’s not about the small groups. It’s about what the kids are doing with the teachers in the small group. The difference is with the younger grades there’s no kids “at home” that the teachers have to juggle with their “in class “kids. The teacher is not teaching to both groups at the same time. At least that’s the model we’re being told for fourth and fifth grade, and even middle school.

Except in the two immersion schools, where all grades from pre-K on up are doing concurrent. Add to that some classes being split in two while in person (due to class size), and yes kids will be on iPads quite a bit while at school. I guess we’ll see how it all goes in about a week.

Do the teachers teach the kids in the classroom and those at home get the day off? If so, the next day do hybrid kids do no work while the teacher re-teaches to the virtual kids?

The amount of details that I have yet to see laid out for everyone when school is re-opening in less than three weeks is mind boggling.

Lessons are posted to Canvas for the upper grades. Students can still follow along from home even if for some reason the teacher isn't live.

Yes I’ll have to try it out when the equipment is there next week. We did a dry run but didn’t have the APS equipment that is coming yet.

Anonymous wrote:Upper elem. virtual will not see in person lids but we only have hybrid 2 days at my school and are all virtual the other 2 days as we have been so that will keep us cohesive. I can project the virtual kids to the room and the in person kids can hear them. I’ll have to do a lot of “Lucy said that the main idea of the passage is XYZ”, does anyone have a different idea?” To make sure all hear each other. It is what it is. I only have 5 virtual and 14 in person.

The virtual kids can see the in-person kids depending on how you set up your webcam.

Upper elem. virtual will not see in person lids but we only have hybrid 2 days at my school and are all virtual the other 2 days as we have been so that will keep us cohesive. I can project the virtual kids to the room and the in person kids can hear them. I’ll have to do a lot of “Lucy said that the main idea of the passage is XYZ”, does anyone have a different idea?” To make sure all hear each other. It is what it is. I only have 5 virtual and 14 in person.

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to be teaching concurrent. We will not have the in person students on MS Teams for the lessons. The teacher will sit and teach from the front of the room/desk with the presentation on the smartboard which will act as a 2nd monitor that I can share within my Teams meeting. I will be talking over a microphone and my in person kids will hear me as well.

Thanks for the response. What grade can I ask, and how will the kids see each other and remain a cohesive class?

I'm going to be teaching concurrent. We will not have the in person students on MS Teams for the lessons. The teacher will sit and teach from the front of the room/desk with the presentation on the smartboard which will act as a 2nd monitor that I can share within my Teams meeting. I will be talking over a microphone and my in person kids will hear me as well.

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Anonymous wrote:They've been virtual for the whole year and the internet has only collapsed once I think, at the beginning of the year. So why would it start now?

Because some schools will now have 200+ people connected to the school wifi (as opposed to connecting from home). I think its very likely the routers at school will go down, especially if they have the hybrid kids mostly doing things on their ipad still.

They won’t be on iPad as much at school. Mostly for specials.

That is not what we have been told. Maybe you’re talking about one of the younger grades? But kids 3rd and up are concurrent will be on the iPad quite a bit. The teacher will be rotating between small groups so while the teachers with the small group, on the iPad the kids will have to be doing independent work on the iPad.

It will likely vary by grade level. Maybe that’s why they split the grades this way? To not overload system as much.

In classes where it's concurrent, the kids even in the classroom may be streaming on MS Teams so that all the kids in the class can see each other. That's a few hundred kids and teachers per day in each building all using a ton of bandwidth all at once. My 5th grader's math class breaks into multiple channels with two or three teachers and the kids are from at least two homerooms, so even in-person kids will be in different rooms and will all need to be on MS Teams to participate.

This isn't the same as the service provider issue on the first day of school, it's whether APS has sufficient infrastructure in each building. Think about the difference in your household when it's one person on a device versus each person running multiple devices at once. I know we had to boost our router once the pandemic hit and we were all working and going to school from home.

OP - call the principal if you’re really worried about it.