Class Works Together to Create New School Website

Mac Estabrooks

Toronto, ON – Most school websites are designed and created by professionals.  This is because a website must be thought up, designed, programmed, networked and updated on a regular basis.  Despite knowing that building a website would be an enormous undertaking, the interdisciplinary class at Lawrence Park decided that they were up to the task.

            The website started off in the design phase with David Schnitman as the lead designer.  David was the fuse for the bomb that is the website.  He started off the project by researching other website layouts and designing one with all of the elements that he observed.  He then came up with the header and the footer for the website with his typical artistic flair.

The next step in the process lay solely in the hands of the programming team which included Alex DesLauriers, Greg Snow and myself. The team was mentored by Adrian Carolli, Lawrence Park’s technical guru, a title he inherited shortly after Bertan left.  It was our responsibility to come up with ways to actually program the ideas that David could come up with.  Greg Snow said that the website “has really shown [him] how to be part of a team and has been a great learning experience too.”

            All of this work would not have been possible without the dedication and efficiency of the project manager, Anand Bery.  Anand easily won the position of manager in a class wide vote and since then he has put his mind to good use by keeping everyone on track and making sure tasks are completed on time.

            The real story behind the website is the teamwork with which the class has been working.  The other students in the class have jobs that consist mainly of updating the website on a constant basis. This is something that is only possible with a tremendous amount of coordination and teamwork, both of which are in abundance in the IDC class.

            The website is planned to be up sometime during the coming weeks as the class continues to work vigorously on it.  If there is anything to be learned from this single group of students, it’s this: with enough teamwork, anything is possible.