Concerns arose that the “My School Online” platform was not very user-friendly for teachers, and many questioned if hundreds of thousands of students could access the platform at once. There was speculation about the possible failures of MDCPS’s online learning launch in the weeks before school started. While the district has claimed that no students’ personal data was accessed, multiple students have come forth disputing that claim, noting that the passwords they had on their computer were compromised. However, after a second consecutive day of issues, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho held a press conference where he announced MDCPS had been the victim of a cyber attack.
#THE SURGE 2 TECH SCRAP GLITCH SOFTWARE#
After connectivity problems plagued students on the K12 platform during the first day of school, the district reported that they had identified and resolved the connectivity problems initially, the district blamed a software glitch. The first week of school for students, teachers and parents alike in Miami-Dade County Public Schools has not gone as planned. 2 By the way, excellent reporting by students in this post. K12 admitted a number of problems that week, but the platform was not the only issue as described last Wednesday in The Panther, a student newspaper. When school started Monday of last week (August 31st), teachers and students faced immediate problems being able to access the MSO platform, particularly the video conferencing. K12 builds the overall platform that integrates these different tools into one solution. K12 does not build all of the software, instead leveraging D2L Brightspace as the LMS, and Newrow, a company acquired by Kaltura in January, as the video conferencing platform for live teaching sessions. In other words, this was a new use case and platform setup.
This was a relatively new move for the company that has long been a virtual charter school operator, with much of the strategy being developed in response to the pandemic. The plan for Fall 2020 through My School Online was to have K12, Inc provide the overall platform. According to Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, in June the district assumed they would be able to move back to face-to-face delivery for the fall.īy mid-July it was apparent that remote instruction would remain in place through 2020, and Miami-Dade announced My School Online, its “distance learning option for those students in grades K-12 who wish to continue their education full-time through innovative learning environments but still maintain their connection to their enrolled schools”. 1 Technically, they integrated Zoom into Microsoft Teams to allow for video conferencing along with the other Teams communications capabilities. When COVID-19 hit in March of this year, Miami-Dade worked with teachers to use a combination of Zoom and Microsoft Teams to provide a learning platform for teachers.
Yesterday the school board had enough and canceled the $15.3 million no-bid contract that the district had signed with K12, Inc to provide a suite of learning platforms, effective immediately, leading teachers to scramble and migrate back to Zoom and Microsoft Teams usage.
#THE SURGE 2 TECH SCRAP GLITCH SERIES#
The nation’s fourth-largest K-12 district, Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida with more than 270,000 students, has seen a series of technical problems disrupting students from taking class. Over the past two weeks we have seen what I believe is one of the two biggest EdTech failures leading to large-scale outages at schools this year (the other being the Fairfax County Public School system in April). Of course, when we have real problems, they can be particularly frustrating for students, parents, and teachers. While there are plenty of complaints about course quality, tuition breaks, and other aspects of remote teaching, for the most part school has been available and EdTech platforms have handled the surge in demand.
I have to admit up front, after the vast majority of the US’s 76 million K-12 students and 20 million postsecondary students had to move online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is remarkable how few disasters we have seen with emergency remote teaching migrations.
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