By Dylan Murphy
While schools across America tried their best to ensure a smooth transition to online learning in response to the increasing threat of the Coronavirus, FCPS, one of the largest and wealthiest school districts in the country, took its time before even making an attempt. FCPS waited a full four weeks after the closure of schools before initiating its online distance learning program, frustrating impatient parents, and adding more stress to confused students. The program began on Tuesday, April 14th, but, despite a gratuitous amount of time spent in preparation, things fell apart almost immediately.
Technical issues were the first major obstacle, as the Blackboard website was unavailable for a long period of time, preventing students from accessing the links to their classes. Many students were forced to show up late or completely miss their classes, while others took the opportunity and used it as an excuse to ignore their classes for the entire day. Given that FCPS had a full month that could have been spent giving teachers more training and fixing the kinks in the program, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many parents, students, and even teachers had an issue.
For students that were able to enter their classes, they were in for an even worse surprise. In several classes, anonymous individuals were able to hijack themselves into the online call, spouting racist, homophobic, and obscene language towards students and teachers. There were even some examples of hijackers exposing themselves on screen and flashing weapons in front of the camera. Ms. Wright, whose English 10 Honors class was subject to this kind of behavior, said, “It was not unrealistic in thinking there would be challenges. However, I did underestimate how much the cloak of anonymity online log-ins and the virtual world would be used to sow chaos by students.”
In response to the myriad of incidents, FCPS closed school for the rest of that week, in an attempt to fix their technical issues, as well as increase security measures to prevent future hijackings. This situation, though troubling as it is, was not unexpected. FCPS, despite its capabilities, had neglected to implement necessary technological updates to their programs that were due for over a year, ignored implementing basic privacy features, and gave teachers minimal guidance and assistance on how to handle these kinds of issues. For the first couple of weeks, teachers were practically left on their own to stay in touch with students. Prior to the pandemic, many teachers at Herndon had already moved their online resources over from Blackboard to Google Classroom, a platform many students agree is more user-friendly and better organized. So much so, the reversion back to Blackboard to handle online learning came as a step backwards for teachers and students. The decision to stick with Blackboard came about largely in part to the 2.6 million dollar contract between FCPS and Blackboard. To make matters worse, FCPS’s version of Blackboard was severely outdated, missing a full seven updates available in the past twenty months. Those missed updates were the main contributors to the technical issues faced for students trying to log in.
Scott Brabrand, the FCPS Superintendent, continued the stalling of education by cancelling all face-to-face classes on Tuesday Apr. 21, and announced that FCPS would be moving away from using Blackboard for Distance Learning. Despite that announcement, many teachers, already behind schedule, continued to hold classes/office hours, trying their best to maintain contact with their students.