Dive Brief:
- Florida's Pinellas County Schools, seeking to keep its bandwidth for educational purposes and not so much for Twitter and Instagram, has restricted student access to WiFi on campuses.
- Widespread use by students for social networking and other non-educational purposes caused officials to pay for an additional 3 gigabits. Currently the county is spending around $1 million per year on bandwidth.
- There will be three options available for connecting to the WiFi; one for district-owned devices, one for personal devices owned by staff, and one for vendors, guests, and select students.
Dive Insight:
A major concern for teachers has been sluggish Internet speeds. The impact of streaming music and videos on lessons led many schools to issue devices that had limited access to the web and that monitored student web history, to implement rules that prohibited smartphone use while on campus, and to use password protected networks. But, as evidenced in Los Angeles and elsewhere, even school-issued devices have problems as students try to "hack" the system.
Students are not pleased at this interruption and neither will their parents and caretakers be when they get their phone bills. But if the plan works, district officials should be pleased to have optimum Internet speeds and lower data plan spending.
