With displays of drones, robots, 3D printing, laser cutting and more, the Afternoon of Technology brought together the Poly Prep community to experience and interact with a variety of technological inventions. The event ran from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. on March 14 in the Legacy Gym and hosted current students from Nursery through 12th grade, as well as their family members, faculty, prospective students and alumni. The Afternoon of Technology allowed families to see and experience all of Poly’s technology-related opportunities in one place with its diverse collection of activity booths and games.
Jean Belford, Computer and Information Science Department Chair, and Charles Polizano, Head of Technology, hosted this event for the first time in 2022 and have continued to host it almost every year since, except for 2025. Polizano, explaining the cancellation, said “Last year, we ran into the issue of simply running out of time to execute the event at the level we expect.” Additionally, thinking back to the first year the event ran, he said, “We were really nervous the first year. How is this going to work out? Are people going to show up? And it exceeded our expectations tremendously.” Belford also reflected on why they wanted to help organize the Afternoon of Tech in the first place, explaining that “having a Computer Science Department and curriculum is very different than having people come in and have a day of seeing how technology shows up in tactile, cutting edge, collaborative ways that go beyond the classroom. And so [the Afternoon of Tech] was a way to allow people to see all that we have to offer in a fun, engaging, collaborative, interactive way.”
At the event, visitors participated in a wide range of activities, with many of the booths run by Poly students. They used special technology equipment available at Poly, such as the 3D printer or laser cutter, and tried controlling drones, the Oculus Quest (a virtual reality headset) and robots. The robots included the Robotics Team’s competition robots, the robotic dog Aibo and robots brought from the Poly Lower School. There were games to play with Poly’s E-Sports Team, in addition to games made by students in the Game Design class or even at home. Belford added that “[since] kids who are from nursery school, up through 12th grade, are invited, there’ll be something on everybody’s level. Kids will be able to code in Scratch, Python and Java, and there’ll be some artwork that they can create using AI.”
There were also booths featuring “unplugged” activities. These were more hands-on and centered around problem-solving, and they were named as such because they involved little to no technology, despite being related to computer science topics nonetheless. These activities were catered to younger kids and included learning binary to make binary bracelets, or using Makey Makeys: kits that use any material that can conduct some electricity, like Play-Doh or certain foods, to control a Chromebook.
Poly invited several alumni who are now in the computer science field to attend the event as well. For this year’s Afternoon of Tech particularly, Polizano noted, “I’m looking forward to us having a lot more alumni coming back to speak about their work than we’ve had in the past.” The alumni came to speak about their computer science journeys after they continued past Poly, through college and work. Polizano and Belford were eager for Poly graduates to return and inspire the younger generations of students to get involved. “Hopefully other students that are kind of getting into computer science can just talk and just figure out, what was your journey like? What’s school like? What are you doing now? And it highlights some of the cool stuff that they’re working on,” said Polizano.
Polizano further explained that “each year it’s a crazy amount of work to try and put together such a big event,” but “as soon as you start seeing the kids running around, trying to solve encryption problems or making a design for a t-shirt, or just making art with post-it notes, pretending to be pixels, that kind of energy is is always really exciting and infectious.” Similarly, Belford also described her love for the events’ energetic environment. Even though she worked hard to plan the Afternoon of Technology and keep it running smoothly, she made sure to take time during the event to interact with visitors and see how they spent it. “I get to talk to kids and families and really hear from them [about] what they’re enjoying in the day, and I get to be both someone who’s an organizer, but I also feel like a participant,” she said. “And that I really like because I get to see how others are experiencing the day.
