On Monday, October 21, a massive outage at Amazon Web Services disrupted major websites and apps. The outage impacted over 1,000 companies and affected millions of internet users.
Students at Bethesda Chevy Chase High School were also caught in the chaos, as Canvas, a widely used learning platform that runs through Amazon Web Services, was part of the shutdown. When Canvas went down, students lost access to the homework assignments, lecture notes, and other instructional materials they needed.
Despite the setback, teachers found creative ways to keep students on track. Ms. Papadopoulos, an IB Biology teacher at B-CC, was one of them. She had homework due Monday night and decided to email her students directly to make sure they could complete their work. When asked about her reaction to the shutdown, she said, “I figured that everyone would be waiting to do the lecture notes at the last minute, and so I wanted to be proactive and send out an email to make sure everyone had what they needed so they didn’t have an excuse, to be honest, to not turn it in.” Her quick thinking helped students stay on top of their work despite the outage. While the shutdown caused stress and confusion for many, it also showed how teachers and students can adapt quickly when technology fails.
