Woes of Web Design
Earlier this school year, I went through my usual struggle with Oviedo High School Administration in mutating my schedule into something that was satisfactory. It ended up looking like this:
- German 1
- Web Design 3 *
- English 3 Honors
- Newspaper 2
- Web Design 4 *
- Physics B, AP
* – Not a web-development class, but instead a class to work on the school’s website, taught by a man who I’ll refer to as “Coach”.
Coach is a very personable guy, is a good story teller, good at managing people, great at impressing the ladies, and is generally rather tolerable.
He also lies.
The Past
In this “web-design” class, a few of the students (including myself) have made requests for various items, and he assures us that what we want, he wants.
Our requests haven’t been unreasonable. The requests have ranged from a better camera (I think our current one is a sort of “toy-cam” from 1996,) PHP (a programming language that is used to make websites easier to maintain and run,) as well as Firefox (to help test and debug websites and scripts,) and more that could exponentially improve the quality of work that we produce.
Sure, a better camera (not even a fancy one, just a better one) might cost $100 or more, and PHP as well as Firefox would take some effort from the school’s system administrator, but this is the school’s website. Don’t you think it’s worth putting some time and money into? I would the administration thinks so.
When we request such items, he will generally make a note of it, and say “I’ll work on it.”
This satisfied us once, but we quickly learned that he would brush off those requests and pressed more.
After further pressing as to the importance of such things, he, again, starts assuring us that he wants us to have whatever we need to do this. After a touch more pressing, he tells us that we have to provide something, bargaining chips, to get something in return, but that day will never come.
It started with a new front-page. He told us that as soon as we got something, anything, up that looked better than the current website, that he will go and lobby for some of our requests.
After the new front-page went live, we pressed for the improvements, and he said “Hold it guys, hold on.” and proceeded to explain that we needed to provide more to get those things. Unfortunately, in the planning stages of the website, we decided that the change would have to be all-at-once. Nothing could be implemented step by step, that everything must go at once and be replaced at the same time. This means that until the entire website is completed, we can’t get any of these improvements.
No camera. No Firefox. No PHP.
The Now
This week in “web-design” is expected to be a monumental one, the week that the old website comes down, and the new one goes up – and he’s still waiting for these “bargaining chips,” and he already knows what it’ll be. For the third time.
This time he wants a calendar on the front-page, that is updated from a feed from another website, HighSchoolSports.net. HighSchoolSports.net even conveniently publishes an RSS feed that allows us to utilize the content programmaticly.
It would be dead-easy to apply this in PHP. In fact, as an example, I wrote a fully-functional calendar based off the content of this RSS feed, but it still wasn’t enough. Instead, he wants us to manually copy the information from the feed into the web-page.
Every. Day.
One More Flaw
On top of these mystical “bargaining chips” being impossible to attain, he doesn’t even really lobby for our needs.
From what I understand, and from what he’s said, he “feels around” for the likelihood of getting something. He doesn’t backup the request, he just asks, and hardly even that.
From his stories of the encounters with administration, he says:
PHP
Coach: “What might the possibility of having a program installed on the server that allows the students to do this website better?”
Admin: “Uhh.. what does it do?”
Coach: “I don’t know.”
Admin: “None.”
Coach: “Ok.”
Camera
Coach: “What’re the chances of getting a better camera?”
Admin: “What’s wrong with the one you have?”
Coach: “I don’t know, man, the kids want a better one.”
Admin: “None.”
Coach: “OK.”
Firefox
None.
In other words, I am under the impression that this teacher has lied repeatedly to us, but not outright. I don’t think he really wants us to have what we need, I think he just wants us to like him for his superficial lies, and be content with his meager attempts at getting us important tools.
He’s lost the respect of his web team, and he thinks I’m coming back next year.
I have bad news for him.