West Seattle Blog…

From concepts to creation: Sealth students unveil web projects

Almost every week for the past few months, we’ve walked into Room 145 at Chief Sealth High School and sat down with two of the students in Sam Reed’s Web Design II class to talk over a project that was part of an ambitious effort he launched this semester — pairing student teams with small-business proprietors to create websites in a real vendor/client type of atmosphere. (He asked WSB last November to put out the call for small-business volunteers, and got more than three dozen responses!) Tonight, Reed organized a reception for the students, their families, and the “clients” to see the sites unveiled — here’s how it went:

First, Reed — a first-year business teacher at Sealth — explained how the process had worked, and some of the lessons the students learned along the way:

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Then the students themselves got up to present their sites and talk about the challenges they had faced. Here are four video clips, followed by three photos. First, Dominic Jensen developed a site for “An Apple a Day” and pointed out a feature he was particularly proud of:

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Christina Soria and Long Dinh developed a site for West Seattle Digital in Morgan Junction:

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Michael Gardner and Corwin Preston worked on a site for horror novelist Ethan Reid – the only site, Reed says, that’s live online right now (check it out here):

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Armando Flores and Jeremy Daffon were on the team developing a site for Stella Ruffington’s Doggy Playcare in Morgan Junction – and particularly proud of an effect showing dog footprints across the top of the page (they even had to research how dogs walk, Reed coaxed them into confessing):

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Photos of the other students who presented tonight — Jessica Deguzman was on the team (with Hayley Chhay, not shown) who developed a concept site, WestSeattleFamily.com, for us:

Chi Pan Tai, an international student from China, put together a site for “Final Flight,” the book that Alki author Peter Stekel will publish next year:

And Reed explained that Hanh Le had a monumental task – the first three clients assigned to her all backed out for various reasons, and finally she was assigned to work on the site for the school district’s Naramore art show, which included hundreds of images:

Reed says Web Design classes are growing in popularity, with 90 students signed up for Web Design I next year and more than 20 already signed up for Web Design II (the class the students from tonight’s presentation have been taking). You can see more of the students’ personal portfolios (including some of this work) at the site with the URL in the photo at the start of this report — MrReedsWebDesign.com.