Ashtonique Bullard, a grade eight student at LW Young School, wrestles with the online system. Photo: Shawn Hanna/Tribune staff
By TANYA SMITH-CARTWRIGHT
tsmith-cartwright@tribunemedia.net
AFTER weeks of preparation by the Ministry of Education, the virtual learning system crashed on day one for thousands of public education students who tried to log on.
Parents, educators and students were up in arms yesterday when they, from their homes, logged on to the ministry’s new and much advertised virtual learning system only to meet the following message: “Undergoing maintenance. Thank you for being patient. We’re doing some work on the site and will be back shortly.”
That message could be seen on most of the laptops and tablets used by students, others however, did not get that far as their passwords did not work.
The Tribune contacted Education Director Marcellus Taylor, who admitted there was a problem with the system.
“We have a hotline and the people have called,” said Mr Taylor. “There is a challenge that is being worked on right now. The system is under maintenance to resolve the issue. The engineers are working on it and we hope that it will be resolved quickly.”
Students are to be in the virtual classroom until 3pm daily, and up to that time on Tuesday, the message on many of their individual screens remained the same.
Dianna Adderley, mother of a student at Anatol Rodgers, said it is a crying shame that her child cannot receive a consistent education like all school aged children should.
“We logged on and from the (beginning) we experienced issues,” she told this newspaper. “We tried my daughter’s password seven times and on the seventh time we got that message I showed you. The Minister of Education (Jeff Lloyd) has been hyping us up for months on this virtual learning and now nothing happens. So now what?
“I call day one a total and absolute failure. To think I took the day off to ensure my daughter was on the right path with this thing. So my day was totally wasted. We tried over and over and got the same message. It’s a faulty system and we can’t even hear from the teacher on this.”
Belinda Wilson, president of Bahamas Union of Teachers, said she warned that something like this would happen, but the Ministry of Education did not take heed.
“Well actually, I think I alluded to this weeks ago,” she said. “From we (teachers) returned to school September 7, we were experiencing issues from then and only teachers and administrators at the time were trying to log on to the Ministry of Education’s virtual platform. And from September 7 up until present, challenges continued, however today, which is the day when thousands of children and parents and teachers are supposed to log on to the system, then the cry now is, ‘we can’t get on.’
“I was saying that now for weeks that even the tablet that the Ministry of Education loaned to teachers was incompatible with Zoom and they needed to be upgraded for about $40 each in order for those tablets to work. So today, the proof is now in the pudding and the virtual school is non-existent because there are thousands of students and teachers who are unable to access it.”
Ms Wilson said not being able to log on to the system is only one problem that educators and students face with the virtual learning platform.
“What also happened that we are very concerned about is that not only are the students and teachers unable to log on, but work that teachers would have uploaded to the site, my understanding is, has been deleted. Students’ passwords are not working and the passwords that the students had a week or two ago were changed,” the president said.
“We are still uncertain as to the digital curriculum; what is the content that is being uploaded to the site? Is it completed? We are concerned about that. Teachers at this time do not know who they are going to be teaching. They do not have the names of their students, a class list or a number of students that are going to be in their classes. They have no contacts for the students, so students have been calling the teachers and the teachers haven’t been able to give them any viable information. And, the administrators seem just as lost as teachers.”
Asked if she had heard anything from the Ministry of Education on the matter of the broken virtual learning system, she responded, “Not one word!”
In a statement yesterday, the Ministry of Education said “technical challenges” prevented many students from accessing the virtual platform. The statement said most school administrators and teachers were able to implement “alternative modes of instruction” using their “plan B”.
The ministry said One on One and Amazon Web Services, the companies responsible for hosting the system, were working to address the issues.
Public schools opened to students on October 5, however last week was dedicated to orientation. Students in New Providence and Abaco must do virtual learning due to current COVID-19 restrictions. Students in other islands are being taught using face-to-face instruction or hybrid methods.
Comments
ThisIsOurs 3 years, 6 months ago
hmmm... its not uncommon for new systems to have challenges. Its also not uncommon to miss things.
What I see over and over again in these govt digitization efforts is the govt being snowed by slick talkers. Mention block chain, AI, virtual reality, have a white partner and you have a multimillion dollar contract. Im still shocked at DAguilar talking about needing "AI" to process "test result positive, deny, test result negative, approve". Someone told him that. And he accepted it.
What they should have done with a system like this was either a thorough load test or a gradual ramp up over the summer.
IT projects are never easy. But there's stuff they could do to ensure better outcomes.
John 3 years, 6 months ago
Did the system crash or was it intentionally hacked? One claim is that even students passwords did not work. Another is that work teaches uploaded to the system ‘disappeared.’ Sounds more like hacking than crashing. There was one institution a while back where students got into the system and presented other students homework as their own. Maybe government should try two things: stagger classes, say some from 8am to 2 pm, others from 9-3 and others from 10am to 4:00 pm and maybe even a fourth section from 11 am to 5 pm, to avoid thousands of students trying to log in at once. And two use alternate platforms, so if one crashes or has other problems, the entire learning system doesn’t come to a halt. Surely it was an embarrassment for the Minister, the Ministry of Education and the government. But hey NIB was also down and customs.. is like the weather.
John 3 years, 6 months ago
And the problem can also lie with the internet providers. Some home (and businesses) internet went down during the thunderstorm on Sunday night and still have not yet been restored.
shonkai 3 years, 6 months ago
It would be nice to know what the real cause was, for once. There are hundreds (thousands?) of IT professionals in the country who are interested to hear what went wrong, if only for their own learning purposes. It is so easy to demo a flashy little app to a group of black-suited gullible managers who don't know how to ask the right questions. It is a little harder to build the agile, scalable and highly available infrastructure to run it for 50.000 students.
bahamianson 3 years, 6 months ago
First thing we have to do is keep the electricity on consistently for many years. Once BEC is able to do that, it will have the confidence of the populace. Secondly, the internet service needs to be consistent. We talk about having everything online, yet the foundational systems are not in place to accommodate the services. This leads to daily frustration, and I mean , daily. The power was off out west last week for 6 hours which caused a surge in a friends generator. He has to get it fixed now. My daughter was doing her college classes online at the same time that occurred. This is very unfortunate. Let us not deceive ourselves, we are far from being where we need and want to be and constant pretty ads on tv will not change that.
tribanon 3 years, 6 months ago
The entire Minnis-led administration knows no bounds when it comes to their gross incompetence.
Minnis has always been much more concerned and pre-occupied as PM with courting, cavorting and catering to the wants and needs of foreign investors with little regard for things like our country's under-resourced and dysfunctional or failed public education system and public healthcare system.
He has proven time and time again that he's too enthralled with the personal trappings, perks and other benefits that come with the powers of his office as PM to be concerned about what matters most to the Bahamian people. And that's why it will never be the people's time under Minnis.
rodentos 3 years, 6 months ago
does anything work in this country?
ohdrap4 3 years, 6 months ago
I don't know about you all, but my experience over the years when attending events with technology locally is such that the internet does not work, the presenter cannot work the projector or they have to scramble for an extension cord.
The better presentations I have seen have been given by foreign salesmen delivering a pitch. But the salesman usually overstates tge capacity of his software and if star asking questions you are seen as impolite.
So, yeah , you were told this could accomodate 50000. But they forgot the if : IF IF you hire a small army of IT people. Instead of dumping on the IT teacher who has a full time table to teach.
trueBahamian 3 years, 6 months ago
The union President said there were issues before the school opened. So, the first thing is, was the system properly tested before going live? To the other person commenting above about a potential hacking, we should ask if the government invested in network security. Of.course, a really good hacker can beat the best systems. But, we can safely assume that a really good hacker wouldn't be interested in the Ministry of Education in the Bahamas. They would find a more interesting target.
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