Hailley and I showed up on the bus, bright and early, for morning Tech Time. We settled our things and readied a chromecart for the incoming students. As they filed in and grabbed their chromebooks to get to work, they found that the school wi-fi was down.
Hailley and I tried to troubleshoot from the chromebooks, and Todd (Lash) eventually came in. After discussing the matter, we decided to turn the obstacle into a teaching moment. I had just been party to a discussion on the architecture of the Internet in class, and so was freshly prepared. I fired up the SMARTBoard and pulled up a blank white screen.
“OK, Tech Time!” I shouted and clapped my hands for attention. “The wi-fi is down this morning,” I continued in a more reasonable stage voice, “So we can’t use our chromebooks to get onto the Internet.” I proceeded to draw a rough schematic of the school wi-fi, explaining how wireless access points communicated with their machines to access the world wide web at large.
Students sat on the carpet in ones and twos throughout the discussion, about half remaining at the library tables to socialize or read books. At some point, Achilles (not his real name) came up to me with a chromebook, stating with a grin that the wi-fi was working again. One hand was behind his back – I knew this kid was tech-savvy, and immediately suspected something. I checked my own chromebook atop the chromecart – still no wi-fi signal in range.
“No, look,” Achilles insisted. I looked at the screen of his chromebook. “See? I’m on Scratch!”
“Did you set up a hotspot with your phone?”
“Maybe,” he says.
“How many people can you share it with,” I ask.
“I dunno, ten or twenty?”
“Do you know how big your data plan is?”
“Oh, we got unlimited data last Christmas.” Perfect.
“Can you help other kids get on with their own chromebooks?”
“Yeah, sure!” Achilles beamed at the prospect of saving the day.
“OK, Tech Time!” I shouted and clapped my hands for attention once more. “Check this out: we talked about how the chromebooks need a wireless access point to get to the Internet, but the school wi-fi is down. The desktops,” of which there were three, not nearly enough for the dozen-plus in the library, “are able to get on with their wired connections, so we know the Internet itself is still working. But Achilles here has a workaround for us.” I gestured to the young man, and he waved. “He’s able to use his phone as a wireless access point, just like the school has. But instead of using the school network, he uses the cell tower network to get to the internet.”
Achilles then helped other students access the internet, and I ducked next door to tell Todd the story.
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