New computer programming and digital citizenship courses as well as new STEM spaces in all divisions are among the significant upgrades to the student experience at Landon.
Fred Haller, Landon’s chief technology officer (a position created in the 2021-22 academic year), oversaw many changes to streamline technology infrastructure and education on campus as part of the 2018 Strategic Plan.
In 2022, the School hired Educational Technology Specialist Nicole Maggio to teach students about responsible and ethical digital citizenship. Maggio and Middle School Head Erin Duffy implemented a digital citizenship program in the ethics and advisory system. The Lower School also received a version of this programming by the end of the school year. For the upcoming academic year, Haller and Maggio will co-teach a new Form III (Grade 9) foundations course on ethics and technology.
Another academic programming change will come with the new STEM spaces in all divisions, including the Brooke ’65 and Rosemary Seawell STEM Center in the Boehly Upper School.
“We are very much building this to meet what the boys’ interests are and what their express needs are,” Haller said.
To meet demand from students in search of more computer programming, the technology department will implement a new course from Inspirit AI, an online education service taught remotely by MIT and Stanford University alumni, that will focus on analyzing data sets. To tie together all the educational programming, the School has hired STEM Coordinator Sean Nolan for the upcoming year. Bryan Calloway will teach a new robotics class in the Upper School in which students will develop skills to create their own “autonomous working devices” they can use in everyday life.
In infrastructure updates, interactive flat panel screens will replace pull-down projectors in the classrooms of all divisions. The technology department selected teachers in the 2022-23 academic year to gauge interest in the panels, and Haller reported that all teachers who used the panels praised them because of their ease of use and interactivity. Middle School Spanish teacher Jeremy Norman ’92 displayed Google Earth images of places in Spanish-speaking countries for the students to virtually explore and create vocabulary lists from their observations.
Security infrastructure is also undergoing an update. All buildings will receive electronic lock systems and “highly secure but private” cameras. Every student in the Middle and Upper School will have an electronic key card to access buildings on campus, and there will be a new emergency response system that all teachers will have access to on their cellphones.
The entire fiber system on campus has been replaced, which will support all the technology updates. Cell phone coverage at Landon will be improved so that calls can be made from all buildings and previous dead spots on campus. And many “critical services” have been put on the cloud, ensuring that local power outages don’t shutdown the campus system.