BLA’s Notorious Wifi

Technology teacher Ms. Roche is forced to resort to pen and paper to complete daily tasks.

Recently, Boston Latin Academy has undergone numerous changes, some of them being the new headmaster, the new front entrance, and the new computers in room 219. However, something that has stayed the same, rather than changed for the better, would be BLA’s untrustworthy wifi.

On countless occasions, a student or faculty member has become very familiar with the school’s wifi system. The wireless internet here at BLA just isn’t up to par. The city’s hotspots for free wifi have faster and more reliable internet access than the wifi in one of Boston’s 3 exam schools.

We are currently living in the 21st century, an era where new technological advancements are being made every day. As time goes on, we are only becoming more dependent on the internet. I don’t need to list the advantages that wifi brings to a learning environment, because most of us are already familiar with them. But what has to be addressed are what problems internet access brings to a high school and what problems are indigenous and specific to BLA.

A problem with the wifi is, obviously, that it doesn’t work. There has been an increasing struggle for students and faculty to be able to use the internet effectively. It has gotten to the point where some classes can’t run the way the teacher has planned because the internet would fail to load a PowerPoint presentation or an important educational video. There have been too many times where teachers had to think quickly and improvise an entirely new lesson due to BLA’s internet failure. U.S History teacher, Ms.Brown, commented, “The inconsistency of the school’s wifi makes it difficult for teachers to depend on it for class instruction”. The school’s wifi, described as inconsistent, is unreliable. Frequently, the internet will crash in the middle of the teacher’s lesson, which disrupts the class and takes away from the student’s learning.

An additional problem with the wifi is the availability of it to students. Smartphones, a prevalent piece of technology readily available to most BLA students, are basically handheld computers. They are useful for a quick Google search or email. Unfortunately, BLA members can’t use them to their advantage because the wifi almost never works. When asked her opinion about BLA’s wifi, Christy Benjamin ‘16 stated, “It is very slow. It takes a long time for the whole class to be on the same page”. She’s referring to the popular situation where a class would be asked to log onto a specific website/powerpoint so that they may proceed with the lesson. However, many students run into trouble when their pages aren’t loading because the wi-fi gave out or the website crashed.

Students feel that the wifi should not only be improved school wide, but also that the password should be provided to every student. Only those who have the wifi password, something that the faculty tried to keep a secret of, can use their internet. “It should be open to everyone” said Brendan Griffin ‘16. He was referring to the sad truth that students aren’t allowed to have access to the wifi. Because students aren’t supposed to have the wifi password, they are even more compelled to find it out from others.

Denying access to the school’s wifi from the school’s own students is like a nursing cat  denying her kittens of milk. It’s there for them to use, so why can’t they have it? So with the aforementioned new computers that BLA has acquired, how are they going to be used if the wifi is not good enough to even access the web? What’s the point?

By Sophia Dorsainvil-Johnson ‘16