The Internet throughout the building crashed during the week of Jan 7 and onward, affecting Wayne-Westland schools as a whole.

This unusual event occurred due to the malfunction of the router that operated the entire district of Wayne-Westland’s wifi. Once the router was replaced with new hardware, the internet once again began to operate.

“We don’t anticipate having any future issues similar to what happened with the old core,” said the Technology Network Administrator Jameson DeVol.

Technology has become quite an essential part of our culture in the 21st century, and that in turn correlates to how schools have evolved with their methods of teaching. With the temporary loss of technology, it forces everyone to take a step back and realize just how dependent we all have become on it. Along with the potential evaluation of how information is taught to students, whether it should change or not. At the time the Internet outages first commenced, this event was the “hot” topic of the school, as everyone was trying to figure out what had happened.

The real impending question though, is how did this affect all of the students during final  exams and grade calculation? In particular, the students who were apart of classes such as E2020 who actually need the internet in order to receive an education? Mrs. Ballard a librarian at John Glenn High School, had some knowledge on the situation.

“The library had to work around the student’s finals, and once the internet came back on the students who were unable to take their finals previously, had to come in either after school or at night on Thursday Night tutoring–which is held from 5:30 to 7:30,” she said.

Ms.Willman, one of the multiple teachers who teach a E2020 class, disagrees on how much the internet outages affected her class.

“I don’t think that the internet outage really changed my class much, because the students can take their work home and complete it there if necessary,” she said.

A common view for students once the outages caused the removal of the internet was inactive smart boards and teachers across the building looking deeply solemn with concern of whether the wifi would return or not.

When the Internet went out in November, it was due to the wind knocking down a power line and setting fiber lines which operate the wifi. However, this outage only affected John Glenn High School, William D. Ford Career-Technological Center, and Stottlemyer Early Childhood Center. The internet was also intermittently out in January dysfunctioning for about two weeks.

The next step in fixing the issue in order to have fully functioning Internet has already been accomplished.

“The new core has been fully installed and is fully operational,” DeVol said.