Lincoln’s parochial schools invested in technology during pandemic. How will they use it going forward? | Education

"Lloyd came in one morning and said, 'We have to talk,'" Heibel said. "We saw that this was something that was going to happen."

So the school purchased Zoom licenses and ordered webcams, which sat unopened in boxes, staff unclear whether they'd even need them. But it soon became clear the need was there when schools eventually closed in March 2020 as COVID-19 crept into Nebraska.

That equipment isn't going back into a box anytime soon.

In addition to webcams, big-screen TVs were installed in classrooms in the fall, projecting the faces of students learning remotely — whether because they opted to be full-time virtual learners, were quarantined because of COVID-19 or were gone for another reason.

"We had a kid go on a hockey tournament Zoom in from his phone in his car," Heibel said.

The school's one-to-one device program, in which students bring their own tablets or laptops to class, had already been in use for years, making the transition even more seamless.

"Technology has been embedded in what we do here for a while now," he said.

And while Heibel doesn't foresee as great a need for remote learning for pandemic reasons this fall, he said the school will continue to allow students and teachers to remote in if they're sick or absent for some other reason.