InClass shut down on the weekend of April 24 to 26 due to a backup malfunction, affecting teachers and students alike. Although the district regularly backs up all of the information, InClass shut down when the backup did not work properly and corrupted data, Instructional Technology Manager Darlene Feldstein said.

According to Feldstein, the district performed routine backups of the server prior to the failure, including redundant data copies, off-site tapes, and “snapshots,” which take pictures of the server at a given time. Due to the failure, the system reverted back to the best data backup taken on March 15.

Teachers who relied on InClass’s gradebook program, an application within the server for teachers to post grades online, lost their records. “Since few teachers use the InClass gradebook, the loss of data was not as bad as it might have been,” she wrote in an e-mail. “The vast majority of teachers’ grades were not impacted by the server failure. Most Gunn teachers prefer to use a third party gradebook program.”

Spanish teacher Sonia Stroessner lost a few PowerPoints for her Advanced Placement Spanish Literature class, but retained them on her desktop. “Technology is very good when it works, but it’s bad when something happens,” she said. “I think it’s great, but you have to have a little bit of caution.” Stroessner records students’ grades by hand and writes homework assignments down on the board each week.

The district increased back-up frequency to counter the crash. The district takes a snapshot every night and creates a tape once a month. “In the event of future failure, we will be able to revert to a more recent copy of the data,” Feldstein said.

Stroessner argues dependency on InClass could lead to procrastination. “Some people don’t study or think about homework until the last minute,” she said. “If you wait until Sunday evening and go on InClass, and [the homework] has disappeared, I can say that it was here written on the board the whole week. You have to have a plan B.”

The technology support staff, Feldstein and science department Instructional Supervisor Lettie Weinmann, will attend an InClass conference to learn about improvements to the server, which will be added by the beginning of next school year. “We are excited about the prospects,” Feldstein said.