Webacom Press: Nanaimo Bulletin

Students get Internet savvy

The site will then be managed with a content management system by the students and used as a means of sharing news, posting tasks, and educating parents.

One student exclaims Andrew is most “awesomest designer in the whole world!“. Quite the title to live up to Andrew, no pressure.

Webacom Press: Nanaimo Bulletin

NANAIMO NEWS BULLETIN – Published: April 26, 2010
Students get Internet savvy
By Chris Bush – Nanaimo News Bulletin

A Nanaimo company helps South Wellington build its own website.

Students are learning the ins and outs of the Internet and website design as they get their school online with help from a renowned local web design firm.

South Wellington Elementary School’s Grades 5-7 students are learning the ropes of web design while creating an online presence for their school. The project started earlier in April.

Jay Somerville, president of Webacom Media, is teaching the students about Internet safety, marketing, design fundamentals and programming.

The end result will be an interactive website that can be accessed by parents, students and teachers to keep abreast of school education programs and general activities.

Cathal Walsh, South Wellington principal, said schools have a difficult time embracing Internet technology and integrating it as a tool that introduces students to new possibilities in education and careers.

“How do we bring students to a point where they see the connection between the use of technology and their improvement of education and career opportunities and so forth?” Walsh asked. “So my idea was if we could bring in a real live use-of-technology person, from a company such as Webacom, and have them work with the kids and make those connections for them.”

The program is also being used to introduce and educate students on the benefits and dangers of social media like Facebook, how to maintain privacy and security on the Internet and the responsibilities that come with building a website.

Marketing concepts and techniques are also being studied, plus legal and ethical issues such as avoiding plagiarizing work of other people present on the web and guarding against being plagiarized themselves.

Somerville said as various stages of the website are completed they are uploaded and the students are shown and learn from the results of their combined work.

The school will end up with a completely interactive website worth about $5,000 that the school staff can edit and update.

“Hopefully we’ll be able to get the parents engaged as well,” Somerville said. “So they’ll be able to perhaps pick one of the teachers and see what kind agendas are going on, what kind of homework assignments have been done.

There’ll be a photo gallery program so the teachers can upload various images.”

Site construction should be complete by the end of April, but Walsh said spinoff learning and instruction from the project will continue through to the end of June.

Source: http://bit.ly/c449sb