September 2008 — eLearning
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Designs on the Future
Hired to create websites for local businesses, high school students are building up their online portfolios while gaining a glimpse of the world that awaits them.
A REAL PRO
LJShopping.Net,
shown here, was
designed by a
Bronx high schooler.
AT MANY SCHOOLS, THE SCOPE of the technology program is too limited to showcase the full extent of students' tech savvy. Solution? Simply widen the boundaries: Take the program out past the restraints of the classroom, the firewall, and the campus gates and apply students' technology skills to real-world chores, affording them authentic learning experiences while also providing valuable services to the community.
One way that schools are achieving this kind of win-win is by offering area businesses the opportunity to have their websites designed for free by high school technology students. Businesses save hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars that would have been spent hiring a professional web designer, while students gain invaluable experience working with clients and can begin building online portfolios that they can then present to prospective employers.
"It's one more thing they can show an employer or a recruiter to show the kind of work they have done," says Jonathan Hendrickson, web design teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx, NY.
Reality Check
High school student
Albert Frates
ALBERT FRATES HAD ONE ASSIGNMENT in his advanced technology course this past year: rebuild his school's website.
"It was pretty much my grade for the class," says the junior at Payette High School in Idaho. "I started from nothing, since the school's server crashed and took the site with it."
Frates finished the job, but soon ran up against the real-world lesson all good designers must learn: Get everyone's input before completing a project.
"We had the site up a month ago and transitioned to a new server, but [every department] wants something different," he says. "So now I have to go through meetings to find out what everyone wants and build that into the design."
It was merely a temporary, ultimately instructive setback for Frates, who has used his talent with computers, software development, and graphic design to create a number of sites professionally, including one (www.hoopstrength.com, still under construction) that uses 3-D modeling and animation to demonstrate strength and conditioning exercises for basketball players.
Frates, who was the only Payette freshman in the 2006-2007 school year to be admitted into the school's advanced tech class, started taking on such projects on his own to augment his portfolio. "My teacher saw what I was doing, liked what he saw, and asked me to create a draft of a school site," he says.
He enters school this fall having to take Payette's website back to the drawing board. "I hope to have it completed by the end of the school year.We'll see."
