onlineeducationconsultancy

 onlineeducationconsultancy

The online learning platform Blackboard, which provides technology for 70 of the nation's 100 biggest districts and serves more than 20 million US students from kindergarten through 12th grade, reported that websites for one of its learning products were failing to load or were loading slowly, and users were unable to register on the first day of school.

Blackboard, which hit four times its year-to-date user average by 8 am, wasn't the only tech company running into issues Tuesday. Websites that track internet outages like downdetector.Com also recorded spikes in reported problems for services like Microsoft Teams and Google Drive, many spiking around 9 am. Three of Texas' largest districts — Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth — were hit with technical problems, as were school systems in places such as Idaho and Kansas. A ransomware attack forced schools in Hartford, Connecticut, to postpone Tuesday's start of virtual and in-person classes.

A Blackboard spokesperson said the problems with the company's website content management system occurred because of a big morning surge in online traffic. D'Anthony White said the system was restored by about 1:15 p.M. And the company was working on refining its approach to prevent further problems. He apologized for the disruption.

"While we planned for a surge in traffic greater than a typical back-to-school period, the patterns of usage exceeded what we anticipated," White wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

Elsewhere across the country, Seattle's system crashed last week. An online learning program used in Alabama and other places recently went down. And North Carolina's platform crashed on the first day of classes last month.

Amanda Mills' 8-year-old son, Rowan, woke up excited to start his first day of third grade, even though it was online through Idaho's largest school district, based in the town of Meridian, just outside Boise. But they ran into trouble even after practicing logging in smoothly on Monday.

"Whatever happens, we'll figure it out and we'll make it work however we can, and rely on the patience of those teachers who are up against their own obstacles," Mills said. "It's a weird, wild world right now."