The start of every new school year promises new classes, new experiences, and this year, a new website.
Teachers, administrators, and students alike are adjusting to a new website this year that gives a more uniform look to all teacher and school district pages. Ryan Rubenstein, assistant principal of activities and facilities, said there were several reasons for the change in websites.
“We were using Microsoft Front Page as our web tool to create websites and to maintain the district websites. As of, I believe December 1, Microsoft is no longer supporting Front Page. So therefore, if somebody’s website crashed or something like that, Microsoft wouldn’t even be able to help support it, so we had to look into something,” Rubenstein said. “That being said, we were trying to move into something that’s a little more 21st century, if you will, than our current website
The new website comes from a company called American Eagle that is also responsible for Stevenson, Mundelein, and Barrington’s websites, according to Rubenstein.
Rubenstein said the District already has the main page for the elementary schools finished, and will be done with the middle school front page sometime this month. The high school’s page should be updated sometime in January because the high school’s page is more complex, according to Rubenstein.
While the main page for the high school may not be switched yet, LZHS teachers attended web training the week before school began to adjust to their new websites. They had to learn how to upload all former links and information from their old websites on to the new faculty pages.
Courtney May, English teacher, said she did not mind making the switch because she finds the new program easier to use.
“I think what I like most about [the website] is it’s a lot easier to put things on the website for students to have access to. With the old site, you had to go through numerous steps. With this system, all you have to do is click ‘upload’ and boom, there it is,” May said.
May also said she enjoys the cleaner look of the website as well, and believes it looks professional.
“My [old] site started to get a little jumbled,” May said. “Now I can start over and re-organize everything.”
Students are also adjusting to the new layouts on the school website as well as the new ways to navigate to faculty web pages. Veronica Brozyna, junior, likes the new look, and hopes this new layout will lead to more teachers regularly updating their websites.
“I don’t think [the new website] is a bad idea, I think that it’s nice to have uniform websites, especially for visitors that are looking at the website,” Brozyna said. “It’s a great idea, if all the teachers actually do use it.”
Rubenstein said that while administration cannot require all teachers to regularly update their websites with new class materials, all teachers are required this year to have a web page available for students.