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The Peddie School is proud of its reputation as a leader in the use of technology. Peddie was one of the first secondary schools to create an extensive local area network connecting most major campus buildings back in 1993. Internet access came in 1994, before most people had even heard of the Internet.

However, the Peddie School is not a technology school; rather, we are a school that embraces the use of technology in all aspects of school life. We have made this firm commitment to technology because it demonstrably improves the quality of a Peddie student's experience in many direct and indirect ways.

The most obvious direct way is using technology in courses, both in and out of the classroom. Technology enhances coursework in countless ways and makes students more active, powerful participants in their own education. Although our philosophy is to encourage the use of technology, we trust faculty to make the ultimate decisions regarding appropriate uses.

Perhaps the most powerful use of technology is its ability to facilitate communication. Technology is used to facilitate communication in a myriad of ways here at Peddie.

An often overlooked, but certainly not less important benefit of technology is its ability to improve productivity. The time saved by intelligent uses of technology allows everyone at Peddie to spend more time on that which is most important.

A hallmark of technology at Peddie—and one of the primary reasons for our success—is that we actively encourage experimentation by students, as well as by faculty and staff. If a new use of technology looks promising, we run with it and then evaluate. Whether the idea succeeds or fails, we learn valuable lessons and never let failures discourage future experimentation.

Our laptop program was a natural result of this philosophy; students are free to experiment on this uniform platform, which we can support in a way that would be impossible if students were working on their own individual computers. With our current support model, no matter what the problem, a student is never without a working laptop for more than a few hours.

At Peddie, our ultimate goal with respect to technology is that it will be taken for granted. Toward that end, we continually strive to make it as easy to use and as reliable as possible. We want members of the Peddie community to use it organically whenever and wherever appropriate with no more thought than they give to turning on a light when they enter a dark room.

"Our strategy is to share responsibility whenever possible, although each of us has a special focus. In addition, a number of student volunteers work on various tasks around the Tech Room, fixing laptops, helping users, researching and creating Web pages, among other things."
—Tom Phelan, I.T. Director

Meet the tech team