LPS Solving Remote Learning Problems One At A Time

Lincoln, NE (August 18, 2020) The Lincoln Public Schools Internet help desk has been busier than usual lately.  Many Lincoln Public School students have opted for remote only learning. They attend class from home, via zoom.   Just short of 1,300 students or parents called the LPS Help Desk with connection problems on Monday. That was down to fewer than 800 Tuesday.

“The technical were, I’d say, 50%” said LPS Chief Technology Officer Kirk Langer.  “25% of the issues were related to the Chrome Books they had, or maybe their home wi-fi.  The other 25% were some of our own errors with our teachers getting students connected.”

Langer said bandwidth and network capacity are not problems.

“Not yesterday nor today were anything where we were taxed to where we were even over 80%, so we have the headroom and bandwidth to do what we need to do.”

Langer said many of the problems faced by the help desk now involve individual devices and homes with multiple students who need to make different connections at the same time.

“Maybe the wireless router they have is not up to the task, and or the learners are just far enough away from it that they can’t get a good connection.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, 8,867, or 21.9% of LPS students had opted for remote only learning.