Historians plan to call the early 2000s the Age of Technology. But these historians obviously haven’t been studying Stuyvesant High School’s Web site for the past six years.

Assistant Principal Technology Services Edward Wong added two new features to the Web site this past year: Language Translations and the Photo Gallery. However, these additions were only made in response to parental complaints, not because of an interest in renovating the Web site. “[Principal Stanley] Teitel said that many parents complained of a ‘lack of communication between the parents and the school.’ It was a mandate from him to add the translations,” Wong said. The Photo Gallery feature existed about five years ago, but “then we lost the photos for some time before I added new ones to the site,” Wong said. Members of Building Stuy Community and current Webmaster, junior Sean Wong, have also renovated department pages and helped create the Stuy Cubed link (a website dedicated to the Memory Cubes, a Stuyvesant public art project).

Past Web sites have included a Virtual Tour application with which users could navigate through the school’s hallways, an aesthetically pleasing, creative homepage, and a quote written under the Bell Schedule every day. Oddly enough, past versions of our Web site seem to be more technologically advanced than our current one, which was created in 2002.

When comparing our Web site with those of other high schools in the city, it’s frustrating to see that their sites are much more developed than ours. The current school Web site, with its bland colors and dull features, portrays a school that specializes in unoriginality.

There are many simple things Wong and the Webmasters could do to make the Stuyvesant Web site more appealing. Instead of the current pictures of the school building, candid pictures of students in class, talking in the hallway and participating in after-school events would help depict a livelier atmosphere. Our school colors are blue and red so there is no reason why the only two colors the Web site uses are blue and white. The addition of features from past versions, such as the Quote of the Day segment or the Virtual Tour application, could easily make the site more attractive.

Also, an improved homepage would give prospective students a good first impression of Stuyvesant. More importantly, current users will find an updated site more useful for looking up information about the school.

And if the student body as a whole took an active role in improving the Stuyvesant Web site, these goals could be achieved. Building Stuy Community and the Webmaster Program are initial steps into encouraging students to get more involved with our school Web site, but they are not enough. Proposals for format changes could count as an extra credit assignment for Technology and Advanced Placement Computer Science classes associated with computer technology (Graphic Arts Communication requires students to create an original logo pertaining to any subject). Stuyvesant is popularly thought of as a school of computer geeks and, in this case, students should live up to their stereotype. There’s nothing wrong about being obsessed with Java.