The challenge
In 1999, the Tomorrow River School District in Amherst, Wisconsin was facing challenges many districts encounter: dropping math and language arts test scores, limited and outdated technology resources, and a lack of leadership in technology training. A small rural district serving roughly 900 students from pre-kindergarten through grade 12, Tomorrow River needed to bring technology into the classroom and use it to improve teaching and learning.
The toolkit
Through WiscNet, a not-for-profit ISP serving more than 500 colleges, universities, schools, libraries, hospitals, and government agencies in Wisconsin, the district gained access to a free toolkit of internet diagnostic tools. The flagship tool in the kit is VisualRoute.
Traditional connectivity tools run in a DOS environment and yield lines of complicated text that can be difficult to interpret. VisualRoute integrates traceroute, ping, and whois into one graphical tool that automatically analyzes connectivity. With a simple click, users see the actual path of a connection in an easy-to-read table and on a world map, identifying the point where data is being lost or a slowdown is occurring. In essence, VisualRoute provides an X-ray view of an internet connection.
In the classroom
During the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics, students in one class were tracking athletes by visiting the Games' official website daily. On one particular day the site was inaccessible. Using VisualRoute, the students determined that the connectivity problem was due to a faulty server in Rome.
Teachers also benefit. When a website is non-responsive, they can use VisualRoute to determine the source of the problem themselves rather than waiting on the district's IT personnel. That self-empowerment frees up IT time for curriculum support rather than network troubleshooting.
It really helps students and teachers understand the internet when they can see the traffic move from one place to another.
Tom Nykl, Technology Coordinator, Tomorrow River School District