HEYWORTH - Before Heyworth High School sophomore Taylor Russell could help the school district redesign its Web site, he had to take care of a small matter -learning how to design Web pages.

Russell's redesign went live last month, but the whole process was about a year and a half in the making, Unit 4 technology coordinator Rena Shifflet said.

Shifflet approached Russell when he was enrolled in an eighth-grade keyboarding class.

"I said, 'This is the kind of things I want the site to do,' " Shifflet said. "How to get it to do that, I have no idea."

Shifflet enlisted the help of Chris Wherley, technology coordinator for the Williamsville School District, to help Russell learn programming languages and software programs.

"He spent a lot of time with Taylor," Shifflet said. "We went to Williamsville and he came up here twice. They also communicated via webcam several times."

Russell also used Internet help sites and blogs to find solutions.

Russell did as much as he could during class but also did a significant amount of work on his own time. "After he left keyboarding class, there was no other class time for him to work on it," Shifflet said. "So everything you see, he's done on his own time, whether it was summertime, evenings, whenever he and I could get together. He did most of it on his own at home."

The site is user-friendly, with drop-down menus that allow access to other areas of the site from any page.

"The site is very complex, as it uses a database to feed daily information into the site," Shifflet explained. "It also has several users with varying degrees of access for security reasons. Taylor set all that up in addition to the design elements."

Shifflet said Russell's personal qualities made him an excellent choice to take on the project.

"When you have someone working on something as critical as this -he has total access to everything that's posted there -my sense of his ability to be professional, to be honest and have a great sense of integrity tells you a lot about this young man," said Shifflet. "He has done something that I have to trust, and everyone has to trust, that he will take care of it, manage it, and not allow anything inappropriate to be on the site."

The site continues to be a work in progress, as many links are to pages from the district's old site that have yet to be updated. Russell will continue to work on the site in the coming years.

"We'll have to find a protege for Taylor before he graduates," Shifflet said.

On the Net

www2.husd4.k12.il.us.