Welcome to the John Glenn High School Fine Arts Department website! The purpose of our site is to share the wonderful talent and creativity of our JGHS students with the world. Paralleling our school’s pledge to student achievement, the JGHS Fine Arts Department is dedicated to presenting the finest possible learning experience for our students. Our vision for the department consists of a three-pronged philosophy: committed staff with high student expectations using standards-based curricula, increased student exposure to the Art world while showcasing JGHS Fine Arts to a wider audience, and maintaining effective teaching practices while incorporating supportive technologies. Our hope is that this website enables us to share our student successes with the world.
While the staff at JGHS has the privilege of seeing the great work our students produce every day, the issue we faced as a department was how to share these student successes with the outside world. As a result, we decided that one of our mission statement goals should be to reach a greater audience via the Internet.
Along with showcasing the everyday magic we do here, we also wanted to show off some of the special presentations from Fine Arts Night way back in 2010. Our goal was to have the site live by June 2010. For those that were not able to attend, this site became a digital alternative to viewing some of what was presented there, fulfilling our goal of having student work reach a wider audience. This site has maintained that goal ever since.
The first step was securing necessary web space and domain to host the site. Of course, with the public school economics being what it is we had to come up with a practical (i.e. free) solution. Luckily, the good people at Lunarpages stepped up. They were generous enough in donating the space and domain for our site. However, Lunarpages has since been acquired by HostPapa. They now host our site.
Once the space was secured, we moved to the creation of the site itself. The software we originally used was iWeb by Apple. iWeb is very easy to use and it allows for lots of control in the design process. However, a common issue with iWeb-created sites is how well they function on non-Mac computers. Since Apple no longer supports iWeb, we made the easy decision to move to new software: Freeway Pro by Softpress.
Once the basic structure of the site was created, we finally were able to get to the fun stuff, the design. The colors used reflect our school colors of red, white, and blue but we tried to keep them subtle so the content would shine and also to reflect a 1960s sensibility, the time when our school first opened. The fonts and layout also reflect a post-Modern look from the era when John Glenn himself was soaring high above.
Now that this site is alive and well, our mission as a department is to continue to showcase the successes occurring at John Glenn High School. We will continually add new content and try our best to make our site the finest internet experience possible!
CREATING OUR WEBSITE
by Ruben Cueto
ARTICLES & INFO
