Slider photo by Dennis Krolevich.
Coming back to the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy (HBHA) this year, students and faculty were greeted with a few new and exciting changes to their school. Whether it is the new headmaster, Adam Tilove, or the redesign of the HBHA website, there have been changes to which they will have to adjust.
While the website is still new and staff and students are still learning their way around its excentricities, it has great potential in the future. “No system is perfect,” says the Director of Technology, Richard Borlaza. “There’s still a lot of things we need to learn about our new website.”
The website was developed over the summer but was a rushed project, so there is much more that can be done with it. Borlaza has received mixed feedback, therefore he believes that the website still needs some work in order to supersede the previous website.
Another important factor is how well the cost of the new site fits within the school budget. “Our older system was one of our bigger expenses,” Borlaza mentions, therefore it is an economical improvement.
While there is still some progress yet to be complete with the system, Borlaza is looking forward to the future and admires the features it offers.
The Community’s Reaction to the New Website
The official HBHA website is still in the early stages of implementation, but during the time that has passed, what is the community’s first impression of the website?
Two anonymous polls have been collected from the middle and upper school students and faculty, containing 23 responses from the faculty and 41 from the students.
This is the overall rating of the website’s functionality, quality, performance, and layout from the faculty’s perspective:
From the students:
Overall, the feedback was varied, just as Borlaza stated earlier.
New Webmasters for the RampageWired
Two additions to HBHA publications includes Jacob Gold and Samuel Wasserman, the new webmasters of the RampageWired. Both have one previous semester of tech club with Borlaza, who is confident that the RampageWired is in capable hands.
Though Gold did not have any experience with web-crafting before joining tech club, he says that he knew how to code fairly well, so it did not take him much time to get the hang of his new job. For him, Borlaza’s class was mostly an independent study, but Gold did receive some help from Borlaza, the Rampage former webmaster, James Mendel, and his Gold’s father, who is fluent in wordpress.
As of now, Gold has not spent time working with the website. So far, his impression of it is positive.
“Overall, the website looks really nice, and I actually really like it,” says Gold. While the editors do not yet know what work he will be doing for the Rampagewired, we are curious to see his capabilities to manage it and enrich its features.
Running the RampageWired will not be the only thing keeping Gold busy this year, he will also be further improving Six13 and creating more content with fellow editors Olivia Balanoff and Madi Bell. Six13 is a student centralized website for artists throughout the middle and upper school to post visual art, literary art, musical art, and any shape or form of creativity. The staff has been working and publishing on the website since last year, but they have a long way to go and need more active creators to progress further.
“Our top priority right now is getting the website in order,” Gold remarks. Other than the handful of digital chores they have to finish, they also want to make advertising a top priority for their publication.
The editors have been throwing around ideas and are discussing putting up posters around the school to publicize it as well as monthly magazines for people subscribed to Six13 to show off the highlights of their content. Gold also plans on implementing a direct link to the Six13 website in the Rampagewired for quick access, and they may even host a few writing contests to give people the initiative to submit their works.
Hopefully, in the coming year it will grow and the community will become more involved.
