We spent a majority of the period today discussing what it means to be a responsible digital citizen. Part 1 of this series examines one way that students are inadvertently sucking up bandwidth at school.
One of the components of being a responsible digital citizen is understanding how your actions affect others. On a network, every action contributes to the speed and reliability of other users' connections. On both the iOS and Android ecosystems, there is option having to do with the how applications are updated and downloaded. Within the settings for the App Stores on both ecosystems there is an option that allows one to download/update applications using Wi-Fi. Unbeknownst to the user, in a school environment, keeping this option checked could be detrimental to a network. For example, I looked through my settings and realized that while on the school Wi-Fi, my phone was configured to automatically download and update applications. Now imagine everyone connected to the Wi-Fi and even if half of the wireless clients were requesting update all at once - what a disaster! To those who aspire to be responsible digital citizens, please make sure that at school your devices are not configured to connect to the Wi-Fi and automatically download updates. Thank you!
***Please note that I am a huge advocate of using Wi-Fi at home to download updates... but school is not the place for these bandwidth intensive activities!
One of the components of being a responsible digital citizen is understanding how your actions affect others. On a network, every action contributes to the speed and reliability of other users' connections. On both the iOS and Android ecosystems, there is option having to do with the how applications are updated and downloaded. Within the settings for the App Stores on both ecosystems there is an option that allows one to download/update applications using Wi-Fi. Unbeknownst to the user, in a school environment, keeping this option checked could be detrimental to a network. For example, I looked through my settings and realized that while on the school Wi-Fi, my phone was configured to automatically download and update applications. Now imagine everyone connected to the Wi-Fi and even if half of the wireless clients were requesting update all at once - what a disaster! To those who aspire to be responsible digital citizens, please make sure that at school your devices are not configured to connect to the Wi-Fi and automatically download updates. Thank you!
***Please note that I am a huge advocate of using Wi-Fi at home to download updates... but school is not the place for these bandwidth intensive activities!