Wiimote Whiteboard - IT WORKS!!!

Well I got the WiiMote Whiteboard working! Can't type any more - too busy playing. I will post a video when I get a moment. Yee haw!

Saturating the Download Pipe

We have been having some latency problems at school recently. Our administrators have not been able to log into their interactive network applications at the Division office. They have been timing out. For you technical geeks out there the latency has been anywhere from 1000 to 1400 ms. Not good. Well, the computer powers that be have found one of the problems.

The delays are being caused by extensive internet use at the school
saturating the download pipe.

In plain English we were plugging up our connection with internet use. So they looked at our webpage hits. Here is some of what the logs said:

http://www.bebo.com/ - 30%
http://www.youtube.com/ - 10%
http://www.messengerfx.com/ - 8%

Wow. That is almost half of our webpage hits. Well the authority figure in me automatically jumped to "We have to stop that - ban those sites, block them, make them go away!" That voice in my head immediatly want to control things. Another little voice said that those figures are embarrasing. I already knew that the computer powers that be are convinced that our students are out of control.

"But wait a minute, what do those numbers mean? Get over the initial gut reaction and have a real good look at them." Great, another voice. This is the one that makes my life difficult.

http://www.youtube.com/ - 10%
Ok some teachers use this site for teaching purposes. At least one uses it extensively in Social Studies and Native Studies. The students often also use this site to listen to music while they work. (And I see them listening to things like this as often as mainstream music). "And didn't we fight to get YouTube unblocked?" But we do seem to spend a lot of time fighting the students who are just watching videos for entertainment. It does also use a whole pile of bandwidth. Maybe internet radio is a better choice for music. Does it use much less bandwidth?

http://www.messengerfx.com/ - 8%
Umm, can't think of too many legitimate educational reasons our students are using MSN messenger. "But really, how much bandwidth does it really take up?" "It distracts the students from their learning!" There go the voices again.

http://www.bebo.com/ - 30%
This site does seem to be the first thing students log onto when they get their hands on the keyboard. It is chock full of big fat pictures as well. I just had a discussion about it with one of my co-workers. He doesn't have a real problem with it. He tells his students that if they have been researching hard and need to take a 5 min Bebo break to refresh then go ahead. And some of them follow this guideline fairly well. He also claims to have seen students chatting about an assignment through this site. "That's crazy talk!" "No they are social networking!" I don't know about this site. I personally find that it really distracts students when they are supposed to be working. I suspect it also chews through the bandwidth with all those pictures.

So what do we do? I do know that our whole system really bogs down when the computer lab is full. Any work involving the internet is difficult to do. I guess that it should be fairly obvious. Keep the students off of entertainment based YouTube during classtime (same with Bebo). "This should be fun."

I am curious to find out what these numbers look like in other schools. Are we as out of control as the computer powers that be claim? (Please say no, please say no, please say no.)