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Sunday Times
1st April 2001 |
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www.and YOUR college.comBy Harendra AlwisThe internet in the recent past has been associated with things like pornography, hackers and bombs, but the next time you log-in, it may help to know that there are nearly as many as 35 Sri Lankan school web sites on the internet. This is a positive sign that schools are changing with the times and are gearing up to meet the challenges ahead.Most of these web sites are remarkably well designed and attractively presented with a healthy combination of efficiency and creativity. Ananda College's site is worthy of mentioning for its graphics. Great care should be taken to make it less graphic intensive as they take a long time to download at the low transmission speeds we have here, but more importantly too many lights blinking here and flags fluttering there made some web sites look more like vesak pandols and failed to serve their purpose as web sites. The Anandians had given all these enough thought and theirs is an example to follow. St. Bridget's Convent and Visakha Vidyalaya sites on the other hand are captivating in their simplicity and elegance. Bishop's College too is worthy of mention in this aspect. Simplicity is a very important aspect of web design. It was a noticeable fact that most boy schools have opted for higher graphic content, while the girls have kept it simple and nice. The Trinity College site reflected a sense of purpose. It was remarkably simple to navigate through. Content wise it was probably the best with well written reports. And the versatile use of language was truly commendable. St. Thomas' College Mount Lavinia has a site that anybody could be proud of. It was complete and up-to-date, a remarkable combination of creativity and elegance complimenting one another. Jaffna Hindu College was another example of a motivating web site. Most of these web sites have been created by professionals with exceptions like the Trinity College site that has been done by the students them-selves. It is not very easy for schools to find students who are knowledgeable enough to design and build a web site, but it is unfortunate that the school curriculum itself hardly allows any time for students to engage in activities such as web design. One of the students pointed out that probably the hardest part of the whole process was to get the relevant information from the official sources on time, and these set-backs make it impossible to manage time and meet deadlines. So alternatively, schools have hired professionals to manage their web sites, but this has proved to be even worse in some cases where the web sites are hopelessly out of date due to the lack of communication and commitment on both parts. A school's web site should serve a certain purpose. When designing them one should think about who it is for. For example, should they cater to prospective students or present students? One of their main objectives will be to give their past pupils an opportunity to get in touch with their old school. It is important that everyone who visits the web site gains something out of it, and thus the task of designing a good web site is made all the more difficult. Leading internet service providers in Sri Lanka have offered to build web sites for schools upon request and host them in their servers for free. "About 19 schools have made use of this opportunity and five more are under construction" said Harsha Arambewela of Lanka Internet. "We are willing to help schools to have their own web sites, all they have to do is contact us and let us know" he added. So the next time you 'log-on' maybe you should check out whether your school web site is on the web. If you don't find it there, maybe you could be the one to build one for your school. Among the founders of the school and all its legendary figures, you may be the one who made its first official web site! Check out their sites Alethea International School - www.lanka.net/alethea
Sunday Times
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