Lake Stevens students create and maintain Web site

LAKE STEVENS -- Fog rolls across a black screen, a gold viking face floating overhead. Click on the viking, and a purple haze appears, followed by information about Lake Stevens High School. There are student reviews of video games, bands and movies and a link to the school newspaper, The Valhalla.

It's definitely not a typical school Web site.

A group of tech-savvy students created the site and update it daily during a class dedicated solely to the site. Teacher Dawn Hanson believes hers is the only one in Washington that runs an actual school Web site.

"We do lots of things around school colors," she said, watching her students type away. "We want it to be kid friendly. It's made by kids, for kids."

During a recent class, senior Chris Roundhill added to his roundup of video games released in 2008. He gave "Left 4 Dead" an A+ rating, and decided "Spore" didn't live up to the hype.

Senior Joe Neverkewitz adjusted his black-and-red music page. When viewers place their mouse on any of three banners, a scroll with local artist spotlights, music reviews or music news pops into view.

Senior Megan Rohling clicked from page to page, reading code, hunting for clues to help her figure out why a series of photos disappeared from the site.

"It's really good for people like me who want to do it as a career," said Cole Menard, as he worked on the alumni page. "For the school to give us the opportunity to do what we want to do in the field ... it's irreplaceable."

Hanson took over the Web site around four years ago. Prior to that, a Spanish teacher ran the site during his planning period, she said.

Initially, she allowed advanced students to work on the site during class as she taught computer skills to other students. Then last school year, she got an entire class devoted solely to creating and maintaining the site.

Each year, a new group of students redesigns the site, while keeping some basic information, like the daily bulletin, the bell schedule and school closure updates.

The students try to adjust the site based on feedback. Some staff members complained that last year's site had too many flashing symbols and text, so this year the students added more solid text, with just a few scrolling bars of information.

Even with the adjustments, the school district's Web site links to a district-created LSHS front page that features simple blocks of text and links to school information. There's also a link to the student created site. Even if Web surfers try to stay on the district site, many links lead directly to the student site, which is updated more regularly.

Roundhill believes the student-created site is better than most school Web sites because it's an actual reflection of Lake Stevens students.

"It doesn't have a feeling that someone just stole a template and threw it up there," he said, working on a review. "I like that it's student-run. It's kind of a little voice of Lake Stevens."

Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.