Is your internet good enough for online lessons?
Leia em português aqui
One of the most discouraging things for online teachers and students is having problems with the internet. Unlike most of the challenges that we have with technology in face-to-face classes, where we can improvise (AKA revert offline mode), often this technical challenge can completely ruin a well-prepared class, costing time money for the teacher and the student. Find out if your internet meets some minimum requirements for a class to work well, and also how to improve the quality of your conferences: The number one problem with the internet connection is speed. It's obvious that if your internet sucks, it won't work for classes. Unfortunately, you will have to up your budget. However, because of the way internet services are sold in Brazil, we do not always have access to all the information we need. Find below the most common problems and how to deal with them:
1. Plans are sold based on download speed and we often don't even have access to upload speed in advertisements:
This one doesn’t even mention upload
When I moved to Italy in 2017 I ended up discovering that upload speed is just as important as download speed. In my house, we had a reasonably good internet connection: 15mb/s for download. I didn’t imagine that I would have so many problems. Having already used Vivo's 3G for classes in Brazil - yes, the 3G of Vivo's postpaid plans work well for eventual online classes -, I thought: this connection is excellent. Guess what? I was wrong. The upload speed of the plan was very low; sometimes it reached 0.3mbps (megabytes per second). I didn't know what that meant, but I quickly understood: I was able to receive the data sent by my students perfectly (15Mbps, right?), streamed with Netflix easily, but I had a huge delay when sharing things from my end. My voice failed, the connection dropped, the video froze. If you happen to be in Italy and need the internet solution I recommend TIM's mini modem, which you can even take with you wherever you go and depending on how long you will be using it will be cheaper than buying credit or paying for roaming. My technical problems made me conclude that I depended on upload speed than on anything in life. After all, I was sharing audio, video, handwritten notes real-time, and editing google docs ... After a lot of suffering and stress, here's the lesson: for a class with a student to work well and you can share the screen, write on the interactive whiteboard, play audio and video, edit google documents, etc ..., the teacher should ideally have more than 3Mbps upload and at least 2MBpb not to face problems of slowness and crashes. With more students, the demand increases.
My drama was to offer something like this, with a lot of uploading:
2. So the “most popular” 3MPS upload plan will be excellent, right?
Probably not.
Another problem with providers is that they do not commit to offering 100% of the promised speed. For me, that should be false advertising, and they all do it. C'est un bordel - as my dear would French say. Many, by the way, commit themselves to 40% of what you hire. With that, if you choose a plan that offers, say, 3Mbps, it is almost certain that you will have problems, as rarely will your internet reach this speed, and many times it will be WELL below 1Mbps. Therefore, it is important to always read what percentage of the promised speed they commit to actually offering, bearing in mind that the minimum you will need to have most of the time should be above 2MBps, so that you have an exact idea of the real speed, so as not to be stressed in front of the computer and cursing the Telemarketing attendants, who are not to blame for this and are only there doing their job.
And oh, your router might cause problems too!
In addition to the internet plan itself, a common problem is your router. Here are some statements:
1. Both older routers and those offered on a loan tend to distribute a signal slower than the one received. Thus, purchasing a current model router can help improve the signal received. I changed my old one for a newer one (this one) and my internet has improved a lot. If your router is provided by the company itself, it is worth calling and complaining to the company, or giving up on the operator and connecting your own new router, directly, to the modem.
2. If you are far from the router (mainly on a different floor from where it is), even with a new router and your internet meeting the already mentioned parameters of download and upload, it is likely that your signal will be weaker. So, prefer to install it close to where you intend to sit for class.
3. One thing that sometimes works with slowness is to restart the router. To do this, unplug it from the wall, wait ten seconds and switch it on again. Often this simple attitude improves speed immediately.
4. If you want more speed, connect the computer directly to the modem with a network cable. I myself have a 30-meter one that I bought just in case when I went to Italy so that regardless of where I lived, I was able to connect with wire instead of depending on the router. Skype is the most famous application, buuuuuuut... It's just not the best! Here's what I mean
