Stansilaus, San Joaquin County Schools Knocked Back To 'Stone Age' By Internet Outage
SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY (CBS13) — Schools in San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties were without Internet access on Tuesday after a construction crew cut an important fiber-optic line.
Students said it was a very weird day.
"We didn't know what happened to the internet," a student said.
But on Wednesday, everything was back to normal.
"Oh my gosh, we're not in the stone age anymore," he said.
The Stanislaus County Office of Education says the outage started on Monday after their ISP accidentally cut an important cable during construction near Highway 99. It knocked out service for all schools in the San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties.
But it went beyond the Internet—the San Joaquin Office of Education was also left without phone lines.
"The San Joaquin Office of Education provides technology support for other districts in the county which means this problem went beyond here, but eight other districts on top of that," said spokesman Zachary Johnson.
Teachers like Tim Welsh at Brainworx Academy had to change lesson plans and go old school.
"I ended up printing out a lot of stuff. We're trying to make an effort to go green here so that didn't sit too well with me. We're not supposed to be doing this, but I ended up making a ton of copies," he said.
But student Lacy Palacioz says going offline made her feel more connected to her class.
"It was really cool," she said. "We all got together and had a discussion. It was really nice. I liked it a lot actually. I didn't mind not having technology for a day, it made me feel closer to my classmates."
The Internet returned to schools on Wednesday, but they are still in the dark about the status of the connection in the near future, but teachers remain flexible.
"As a science teacher I always think ''What if there's a solar flare or a coronal mass ejection?' If things go down, what's my backup plan?" Welsh said. "So I think that needs to be in the back of my mind at all times."