Students and staff alike are constantly looking for new ways to improve the campus experience for their fellow peers at DMAE. The Practical Web Design Club is one such group who strives to make these improvements to the school.

Recently, the club has been working on something new and exciting according to Mitchell Ravitz, advisor of the club. He explained that it will be unveiled next year but involves the many school television screens that will publicly show vital daily information.

“David Kotaev in Mr. Sherry’s database class came up with the idea. There were all these useless TVs hanging around doing nothing. We can get these to display something,” Mr. Ravitz said.

When developing the webpage, the club decided that the most important aspect of information on the screen should be time.

“As students travel around the campus between their classes, they will be able to get a quick glance at how much time is left until the next period begins, the current time, and what period they’re going to,” Mr. Ravitz said.

When these details are developed and out of the early stages, then the club plans to add other information as well: sports meetings, bake sales, and late bus availability are just a few ideas that might have a place on the TV screens in common areas, cafeterias and hallways.

Sophomore David Kotaev is the main developer of this project. He designed how the screen will look and did much of the programming himself.

“First, we had to conceptualize the idea and know what announcements we needed to put on it. Some of the more important things we knew from the start,” explained David matter-of-factly. “We already had our Raspberry Pie, a computer the size of a credit card, and we had a beta design for our website,” David continued.

David predicts the webpage will be finished sometime soon.  With the school year coming to an end, students might not be able to see the finished project until September.

“If this is well received, we will get a dedicated server for this project,” David said.

David has high expectations for this project, and hopes to be able to expand upon it if students react positively.