History of the Senior School Desktop
The SSD is a web site designed and maintained exclusively
by RSGC teachers for the benefit of their students in the Senior School and
an immense source of pride to its developers, contributors, and student audience.
YEAR
5. Like each of its predecessors, the 2010-2011
Senior School Desktop seeks to improve the resource for the
benefit of its users and contributors. For this year, the most noticeable
change includes the page positioned within a 1000×590
window, centered on the screen. Also, the former drop down box method of
selecting course
daybooks
has
been replaced
with
a smoother, flyout
menu navigation strategy. Jeff Enfield convinced a good number of faculty to embrace Dreamweaver as their development platform for their web content.
YEAR
4.
The 2009-2010 Senior
School Desktop welcomed an administrative
component. Joining
the SSD development team this year was Ms. Shirley Wagar whose
role is to provide time-sensitive announcements by way of the In
the Loop segment on the home page. The design theme of the site
has migrated once again, in a direction in
keeping with the school's web site,
The
Shield, and other communication vehicles.
YEAR
3. The 2008-2009
Senior School Desktop represented the full academic implementation
of the eNitiative as
Specialization and Graduation Year courses were incorporated
allowing our community a single point of access for the course information
they
required. As far as is known, the SSD is a resource unique
to RSGC.
YEAR
2. The 2007-2008
Senior School Desktop
emerged as the sequel to the FYD. The smooth integration of Transition
Year courses with the Foundation Year courses demonstrated the strength
of
the design of the site and its sound philosophical footing. With Jeff
Whittard
leaving RSGC for Hillfield-Strathallan College, Mr.
Jeff Enfield
joined to the Development Team to share promotion, training, support, and
R&D
responsibilities with
Chris.
YEAR
1. The 2006-2007
Foundation Year Desktop was the result of a meeting in January
2006 held by the Foundation Year faculty convened to discuss possible ways
to facilitate the
integration
of
laptops
into our curriculum the following September, when the first wave of
Grade
9 students would arrive with iBooks in hand. The two-hour session was productive
and generated numerous possibilities. After the meeting, Chris D'Arcy and Jeff
Whittard remained behind to convert
the suggestions into the concept of a collaborative,
all-in-one web site that would allow faculty to contribute content daily
through their existing First
Class Web Publishing folder. The strategy was presented to Paul O'Leary,
who gave his seal of approval. Dubbed the eNitiative,
Chris and Jeff undertook weekly
meetings with the FY stakeholders from January through April of 2006 to
ensure as many faculty concerns and viewpoints as possible were considered.
The cumulative result of the development efforts was the highly
successful 2006-2007
Foundation Year Desktop (FYD) that demonstrated how a committed
faculty could work both independently and cooperatively
to provide our Grade 9 audience (students and parents) with efficient access
to the volume
of information and resources that had previously been awkward to retrieve.