Activ8
Learning Curve
Aorere College, Making Websites Work
Making Websites Work.by Sara Goessi.
What did you do in the school holidays? Krystle Mikaere spent a lot of time animating a drawing of a ribbon on a computer. The process is similar to old-fashioned animation, where you draw the same thing over and over, with small variations, to give the impression of a moving image.
In an animation program called Macromedia Flash, Krystle repeatedly drew the line of the ribbon and incorporated a photo of a handbag to complete the image.
"I redrew over the line continuously and then animated it, and the bag follows that path," she says.
It's incredibly painstaking but Krystle says she really enjoys the process. "I'm pretty much a perfectionist," she says, "so I like it when it's just right." And it's not just a holiday project: her animation now livens up the home page of fashion accessories site Flair Essentials, a local business that has commissioned the website that Krystle is working on as part of her NCEA Level 3 coursework at Aorere College in Papatoetoe.
Another student, Vera-Anne Tukariri, is working on a website for the same client, while the rest of the class is creating sites for other small businesses, as part of the NZ Trade & Enterprise-funded Enterprise Triangle Project. The Project is run across three schools, Aorere, Onehunga High and Howick College, intro ducing secondary school students to realworld learning situations.
At Aorere, it's based around ICT as well as business; at Onehunga the focus is on hospitality, and at Howick, design and construction.
Students from the three schools attend workshops each term to share knowledge and, according to Aorere's principal, Mike Williams, there's cross-fertilisation taking place, with each school having a different focus: "When the schools come together they're not talking about IT, but about the business behind it," he says.
Guest speakers are also brought in to speak at the workshops, on subjects as diverse as branding and motivation. "That really impressed a lot of these students," says Aorere ICT head Angela White, "that with driving ambition and stickability you can actually go quite a long way."
The students also work closely with a project manager, Scott Mackenzie, who helps link them with businesses looking for a web presence.
FIND THE CLIENTS
Aorere's Year 13 ICT class creates free sites for the clients, who are mostly small local businesses - though one student, Samantha Aati, is designing a site for an arts centre in Samoa. The students are also involved in fi nding clients, either through their own contacts or with Scott's help.
Their teacher sits in on the initial meeting, but from there, the students are interacting with their clients on their own, Angela says, only calling her in if there's a problem. Over 12 weeks, they work with their clients to come up with a website.
Together, they write a detailed brief, which covers what the business wants to be able to do with the site, what images will be used, text, photos and other elements.
Once the client is satisfi ed with the brief, work starts on the concept, using a web editor. It's a learning process that started in year 11 for these students. In their fi rst year of ICT, they learned to work from a brief. In year 12 they concentrated on looking at an issue and developing a solution for it.
By year 13, they are looking at a client's issue and the solution they are developing is likely to be a website. In some cases, it's a print publication, but most businesses opt for websites.
The students have looked at HTML, (the code behind web pages) in year 12. "They have a basic understanding of code, but using web editors like FrontPage and Dreamweaver doesn't demand an in-depth knowledge of writing code," Angela says.
Each week a mentor, Richard Wright, a web developer from Federation Media, spends an hour with the students.
Once they have a concept, the students go back to their client with a few options for design. In some cases, the students work in teams; in others, they are producing different concepts for the same site, letting the client choose the one they prefer.
The next stage is working on the design, fi ne-tuning the concept and thoroughly testing the site. When it's all ready to go and approved by the client, the student hands over the site in a digital format along with all the necessary user documentation.
From there, site maintenance and content management is the client's responsibility, and the students design their sites to make this easy.
BUSINESS SENSE
So where do the students go once they have a website under their belt? For a start, they can put a portfolio together and use it as entry into a tertiary design course.
Several members of the class are also planning on going into business themselves, Angela says, and the level of technical knowledge they've picked up by this stage is invaluable for budding entrepreneurs.
The fact that they've had to adhere to strict briefs and meet deadlines set by their clients is excellent experience.
"We're hoping to provide something that looks reasonably corporate," Angela says, "and clients have been valuable in talking about what styles are current and appropriate."
Student Richard Khou is redesigning an existing website for a company that helps local exporters comply with international security demands. It's serious stuff.
"The original website was all over the place," he says. "It hadn't been updated since 2003."
In close consultation with the client, he's rearranged the content on the site, applying a clean design and making it easy to use and easy to maintain.
It might be tempting to go wild with design when you're revamping a site, but as Richard says: "It's an industry website so it has to be formal."
top of page °
