A New Look

As everyone in Scotland knows, qualifications are a'changin:  out going is the Standard Grade and Intermediate's to be replaced by the Nationals.

To coincide with the change over, we in the Computing and Business Education Faculty at Johnstone High School are experimenting with a new look to our growing website at JHigh.Co.UK.

The current look is beginning to look old hat and in cutting edge web design there has been a move away from the old banner plus 3 column main content structure, which is still a very flexible and easily adaptable construction.

As you can see the new look is very different with broadly speaking two different panels.  On the left hand side is a picture of an urban street dancer, which is intended to convey a sense of dynamism.  Computing and technology is unlike any other subject in that it is so totally dynamic.  The age of a the 'dancer' is intended to indicate the main orientation of the site in that it is intended for Secondary School age young pupils.

some happy shiny and smiley folk

Although the image might be a bit gritty and urban for adults and educators, it represents an attempt to break away from the clichéd representation of  bright, shiny, smiley young people that most designers use in 99% educational web sites.  Not that they are not at bright and shiny at Johnstone High School, its just that the usual pictures chosen are orientated more towards parents and adults rather than young people who attend the school.  And we hope that the continued development of the site is going to be very much under the influence of those who use it.

The right hand panel contains category headings (plain boxes with text headings) and images.  The images are links to different courses. For example Computing contains links to Standard Grade, Intermediate and Higher courses.  The construction of the panel in this way allows great flexibility, with new courses just requiring a new image to be added to the page with very little HTML code.  The page will automatically adjust to the new link and not require a major revision.

Anyway that's fairly lengthy explanation as to why we've changed our look.  You can still gain entry to the old look through the about us link.


What we want know from visitors and everyone else who uses this site is "What do think of the new look?  Like or dislike?