Tech Status

This page is to inform PLSD staff of technology issues and resolutions.

Universal Down Detectors

Ongoing Known Issues in the District

Wednesday, January 15th, 2020

McGraw Hill outage

McGraw Hill is reporting an outage with their ConnectED page. This may or not may impact students and teachers logging into ALEKS Math.

Here is McGraw-Hill's status page - https://status.mheducation.com/

Log in issue has been fixed per the McGraw Hill status page.

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Downloading files on Chrome - Read and Write for Google

Users are having issues downloading through Chrome. If Read and Write for Google is turned off, then downloading is allowed. We are currently working with Read and Write to determiner a solution.

Note from Read and Write (Texthelp)

The issue that you're seeing is being caused by a setting in Google Docs that is only occurring on Mac machines. We have an update that will fix the issue but it's pending review from Google. If the option Show document outline isn't selected, the error "Unable to open file" will occur.

Users can bypass this issue until the update is released by following these steps:

1) Make sure Read&Write is turned off (Right click on the purple puzzle piece icon and go to Options then move the slider over to the right to turn of Read&Write for Google Chrome)

2) Open a Google Doc and while it's loading go to View

3) Click on Show document outline in the menu - if the error message appears, please reload the Doc and click again on Show document outline

4) Once Show document outline is selected, they can follow step 1 and turn Read&Write back on and use it with Google Docs

Tuesday, November 5th, 2019 - 8:19 AM

Battery Issues with the Chromebook 3100 (devices that 5th and 9th graders have)

We are aware of a battery issue with the 3100 Chromebooks that need to be plugged into power to start up (Jump Start). We have been working with Dell and they have identified the problem and are working with Google to fix the issue ASAP.

Note from Dell -

Some customers are reporting Chromebook 3100 (clamshell & 2n1) and 3400 system will not power on without connecting AC power adapter. We uncovered an issue with the Google Embedded Controller communicating with the battery. The fix requires a firmware update to the OS, which Google is working on. Once Google has the update complete, we’ll validate that the update did indeed fix the issue, then Google will push out the update. No official timeline for all of that to happen as the ball is in Google’s court right now, but as soon as we have more updates we’ll communicate them out.

Current Short term workaround

Plug the system into the Dell AC adapter to power on. Once powered on with the AC adapter, the system returns to normal operation. After this the AC adapter is not needed for continued operation.

Thursday, October 31st, 2019 - 3:01 PM

Chrome Browser on Chromebooks and FLASH

We have been made aware of a known issue with Google Chrome OS 76+ and Flash.

At the end of 2020 Google is eliminating the issue of Flash on the Chrome browser, hence impacting all of the Chromebooks.

Also Chrome is now blocking Flash and users have to allow Flash each time they need to use it. Once a user logs out of their Chromebook, the Flash settings are reset to block Flash.

We are seeing this issue with ST Math in the elementary and middle schools.

Unfortunately, there is no way around this, besides manually allowing Flash each time. We have contacted ST Math to determine if they have plans for correcting this. We have not heard back yet.

Here is an article with more information about OS76+ and Flash

https://www.howtogeek.com/434334/how-to-enable-adobe-flash-in-google-chrome-76/

Wednesday, October 30, 2019 - 7:49 AM

Illuminate Education

We are experiencing issues with Illuminate Education where students are assigned multiple assessments. The Assessments are from different grade levels or schools.

A help ticket has been submitted to Illuminate to determine a solution.

Illuminate Education's Status Page

Wednesday, October 30, 2019 - 9:03AM

Reply back from Illuminate Education - Thanks for reaching out! Our developers are aware of the issue and are working on a fix right now. I will update you as soon as the patch is pushed through!

Wednesday, October 30,2019 - 2:22PM

Our team has identified and resolved the issue regarding additional assessments appearing in the student portal, and students should no longer be seeing them. If you have any questions, or find that the issue is still occurring, please let us know.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 10:19 AM

Illuminate Education

We are experiencing issues with Illuminate Education where Teachers cannot close out of the assessment window.

Illuminate did report (last night) they did have some issues. A help ticket has been submitted to Illuminate to determine a solution.

Illuminate Education's Status Page

Thursday, October 29, 2019 - 9:07AM

Reply back from Illuminate Education - I do apologize for the delay in this response. The pop-up window was removed shortly after we started getting notifications from users of the problem. In the future, if you press the ESC button, it will make it go away.

Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 1:32 PM

YouTube

I just want to make you aware of a new issue with YouTube.

YouTube just changed its policy on end-users (students) that are under the age of 18 and their use of YouTube. The policy does add a new wrinkle to how students and staff are using YouTube in agreement to the new policy and also following the major national laws of CIPPA, COPPA, and FERPA.

At this point in time, we are still trying to determine the best course of action to determine how to proceed. So you might see a few glitches with YouTube, might see a few videos being blocked that were previously unblocked.

We are currently working on our plan and hope to have it ironed out soon.

So I apologize for any YouTube issues that might arise in the next few days, but we were just made aware of the policy changes that YouTube just released a few days ago.

Friday, October 18, 2019 - 2:26 PM

Chromebook Slowness, Freezing and General Use Issues

We have been getting numerous reports about Chromebooks being slow, freezing and being grumpy. We ran numerous tests to determine the issues. Here are a few recommendations that we have to improve performance.

All of the tests generated results based on:

    1. Too many tabs being opened at the same time
    2. Too many extensions being installed on the user's account.

Recommendations:

    1. Close all of the tabs besides the ones you critically need. For example, if students are using iReady, then close out all of the other tabs after they have logged into iReady, including the Classlink tab.
    2. Take a look at student's extension bar and see if they have downloaded unnecessary extensions. Have students delete these extensions if they are not needed. Some of the extensions are loaded by the district (so our programs will run properly) and cannot be deleted.

Friday, October 18, 2019 - 8:57 AM

HAPARA

Hapara seems to be down, not allowing teachers to click into classrooms. We have contacted Hapara and we are currently looking into the problem.


Friday, October 18, 2019 - 12:25 PM

Hapara is back up and running, fully functional.

Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - 3:47 PM

IREADY

Since the major iReady outage we had a few weeks ago, we have been getting reports that for some students iReady has been slow and some students it even freezes. It is totally random as to what students are impacted. We have run all of the tests that we can on our network and on our devices. It does not appear to be on our end.

So the past two days we have been on the phone with iReady and they have identified the problem as being a bug in Chrome OS 75, 76 and 77, which is currently the OS that most of our devices are on. iReady is actively working on a fix that will work with OS 77 and they have said that when OS 78 is released the bug is fixed. But OS 78 will still be a few weeks away.

They have said one of the bugs is when students click rapidly on iReady, this is causing some of the devices to freeze.

We are sorry for the issue, but we are out of ideas on how to fix this on our end, as the bug is with iReady.

Feel free to share this with the staff if anyone is reporting problems. We will continue to work with iReady to determine if there are any additional quick fixes.


Update - Friday October 18, 2019 - 2:26 PM

Recommendations:

    1. Close all of the tabs besides the ones you critically need. For example, if students are using iReady, then close out all of the other tabs after they have logged into iReady, including the Classlink tab.
    2. Take a look at student's extension bar and see if they have downloaded unnecessary extensions. Have students delete these extensions if they are not needed. Some of the extensions are loaded by the district (so our programs will run properly) and cannot be deleted.