NHS Group Takes First Place In Web Design For Third Year Running

By Laurie Borst

Newtown High School’s IT Leadership Academy (ITLA) attended the CT Innovation Challenge at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford last month. For the third year in a row, the team, under the direction of teacher Kristin Violette, took first place for web design.

This year’s team consisted of Amar Agashe, Zach Bokuniewicz, Nathaniel Burns, Kate Foy, Ivan Judak, Melissa King, Alex Lubinsky, Steven Rollo, Tori Sandifer, and Patrick Shirley. Melissa and Alex were also on last year’s winning team.

Alex was the team leader who “cracked the whip and got things done and kept people on deadline.” Joe Lenzen was a senior on last year’s ITLA who came back to lend his expertise to the team.

The CT Innovation Challenge is sponsored by the Connecticut Career Choices program and the Connecticut Office for Workforce Competitiveness and Education Connection. The challenge brings together students and members of the business community. The Newtown students worked with mentors from IBM.

The theme for this year’s challenge was “Web 1.0 is Dead! Long Live Web 2.0!” To complete the challenge, the team had to research, design, develop and present a Web 2.0 service that utilizes the current technology to “bring about business transformation and positive societal change.” The students developed a web site, a mock company, and wrote a white paper describing their innovative service.

In 2005, that team founded mediagruppe and created the web site BandScape.net to help bands and musicians find each other.

This year, mediagruppe added Thunderdome.mobi, a web 2.0 debate site. The site is not yet fully functional, but it’s aim is to provide an on-line 3D real time debate site where topics and debate times are posted and those interested can sign on and debate the topic with others or just listen to the debates.

Zach Bokuniewicz, who worked on graphic design, said of the project, “It was good experience for those of us who want to go into these fields. It showed us what it’s like in the business world today. We’ll carry this experience always into our adult lives.”

Patrick Shirley, research specialist, added, “It was a fun group of people. I like that I could use skills I had to come together with others to make a big project.”

Creative Specialist Tori Sandifer summed up how the experience opened up doors for them. “It really gives us a chance we wouldn’t go out and do for no reason. You got to hang with people you wouldn’t hang out with otherwise. We forged new friendships.”