Remote learning at NYC public schools gets off to rocky start

Many public school students attempting to log on to the first remote snow day in New York City were greeted with error messages on Tuesday, as families were told to keep trying because the system was overwhelmed.

Parents at home with their kids due to a snowstorm said they were having difficulties with an array of platforms and devices, including Chromebooks, Google Classroom, Zoom, Outlook, TeachHub and the citywide attendance app.

Schools Chancellor David Banks said he was “angry” at a press conference, and blamed IBM, which handles authentication for remote learning platforms. The city’s public schools use IBM for single sign-on, which allows students to log in to multiple different remote learning platforms with the same username and password. But if IBM's tool goes down, all the other remote learning platforms do, too.

Read the full story on Gothamist.