Upon entering the building of St. Louis U. High, instead of being greeted by cheerful receptionist Mimi Hartung, students are now welcomed by an imposing thermal camera, just one of the many technology additions to SLUH that have made being in person possible. 

Over the summer, SLUH’s IT department has been hard at work making sure that SLUH is ready to begin the school year despite the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Right upon entering the school, students will come face to face with technology that was put in place over the summer to help operate the check-in process more smoothly and efficiently. The first major tech addition made was adding a top of the line thermal imaging camera to effectively read students’ body temperatures to screen for fever, one of the defining symptoms associated with the novel coronavirus. 

“This technology is great,” said Director of Security Dan Schulte.  “The thermal camera takes temperatures so fast that it doesn't require a long line, also it sends the readings in live time to our screener. It's a pretty cool system and it makes the whole process so much easier and efficient.” 

Right after school transferred to an online format in mid-March, Schulte and the IT Department went to work trying to find a check-in process that would help to make the students’ eventual return to campus safer and more efficient. 

“So we started doing research on technology as early as April,” said Schulte. “Dr. K, IT, and I were getting inundated with different check-in processes. We got tons of emails from companies trying to sell us products. We talked and deliberated for a long time but eventually, we decided to use companies we have worked within the past.”

The thermal camera was not the only technology addition that was put into place to help ensure that the check-in process was completed in a safe fashion. Early on, the administration decided to completely cut out homeroom in the morning in order to limit the number of places a student could spread COVID-19. The IT Department, working closely with Dr. Kesterson and Mr. Schulte, had to devise a way to safely check students into the school building to take attendance. 

“We were trying to limit the places people go, homeroom was one more location where kids could gather,” said Schulte. “We can also use the system for contact tracing. It's important to know where you were, what time you arrived, and who you were around.” 

The school searched to find the best and easiest check-in system available. At one point, senior Daniel Blittschau even attempted to create his own app to automate the check-in process by using students’ lanyards.

“At one point, I had built a small little app that would have lived on the iPads,” said Blittschau. “The reason we didn’t go with this route was because we would have to maintain this system that I built but also extend the existing systems and sync in a lot of development hours to expand the existing system and we decided that it wasn’t worth it.”

After months of deliberation, the school decided to settle with a company that they had already been using for the past two years called Visitu.  In years past, the school had used Vistu to check-in visitors to the campus, now they are using it to check in the whole student body and faculty. 
The check-in process was not the only thing that the IT Department had to work on to accommodate the return to school, they also had to install technology to accommodate for the hyflex model of learning that the school administration released in early August. 

“We wanted technology that would allow the experience to be as similar for the student sitting in front of the teacher and the student sitting at home,” said math teacher Craig Hannick.

In order to try to make the learning experience as similar for the students using zoom as possible, the IT department installed a top of the line camera and microphone in every classroom inside SLUH. 

“When you have your classroom split between kids at home and kids in person you really need to keep the kids engaged,” said Director of IT Jonathan Dickmann. “For me, a huge part of it is sound, because even if your picture freezes up you can still hear, which carries the whole thing.”

For the IT Department and the curriculum committee, they wanted to prioritize installing quality microphones in each of the classrooms before worrying about the video portion. The IT team ordered a variety of different microphones from Amazon, tested each one out, and then ordered the one that they thought would work the best for SLUH’s needs.

“A lot of the process was the decision,” said Dickmann. “Just getting some kind of decision made, the way the summer went there was a lot of uncertainty for what the school year would look like, so coming up with a plan, getting funding and getting the parts to arrive was a big part of the difficulty.” 

The IT department settled on the AmazonBasics USB Conference microphone which they found is able to perform the best and deliver the best audio to those students at home. 

After they found the microphones, the IT department’s next task was finding a camera that would be able to provide the students at home with a clean image of their teacher and any work being done on the white board. Similar to how they found the microphone, they ordered a couple of different options and assessed each one to find which camera would best fit the school’s needs. They decided on a standard webcam, and like the microphones, ordered enough for all the classrooms. 

“I am very grateful for the tech team who spent a lot of time this summer testing and installing new tech products to make sure we had high quality stuff,” said math teacher Stephen Deves. “I have been able to basically walk anywhere in the room and my students at home have been able to hear me and be able to hear any student that participates without having to yell or raise their voice, so it has allowed us to have a semi-normal class and conversation without having to worry about the tech malfunctioning.” 

All of the standard classrooms received one set of the standard conference room microphone and camera. However, some of the specialized classrooms—such as the science classrooms and the fine arts classrooms—received other technology in order to accommodate those classes with a more hands-on curriculum. 

“For rooms like fine arts and science, since the rooms are different, it took us a little longer to install,” said Dickmann. “But for fine arts, everybody teaches something different so we had to work individually with each teacher to help meet their personal needs and find what technology made the most sense in those rooms.”

Another classroom that received a different piece of equipment was room M215, which is a classroom that is also used to host a variety of other events such as club meetings and faculty meetings. 

“The camera up in 215C is pretty amazing, it's able to rotate, has a remote control, and very high-quality video,” said Hannick. “It really is quite outstanding.” 

All of this technology was put in place to help ensure that students could arrive safely at school and continue to receive an exemplary education even from their own homes. 

“One of my primary goals is for the school to function so that students can learn and teachers can teach,” said Dickmann. “All of this new technology allows us to stay open and to continue functioning. There is a lot of value to being present, being with your teachers, being with your brothers, and this technology really helped to make a return to school happen.”

Photo | Jack Figge