We feel your pain. 1885's school is the premiere IT school in the county (out of 10 high schools), and websites have always been one of our strongest areas. Because of what they learn in class, the students are able to create professional-grade websites when collaborating together. And with the help of our leader (who teaches the IT classes, which includes an Oracle and Cisco certification course
) they're able to do spectacular things with them. We too do not understand why we don't win the website awards, yet we know that the students are gaining a
massive amount of knowledge and experience by doing it the way we do it, regardless of what the judges say.
For example, this year they students setup a SharePoint site on a server that was about to be surplussed from the school. Forget the fact that it's Microsoft proprietary stuff here; the goal for this year isn't so much an award as it is internal functionality for our team while continuing to further their knowledge in a direction that they will use in the future. Though when I think about it, I know the lead student, so I know that before he submits the site he will do his best to win an award via aesthetics and such. So even if we don't win an award for it, the website team knows they've progressed our overall team forward much further than if they simply went with something for the judges. Besides, we see the website as more a portal to our business partners rather than something simple to be judged
.
I'll have to take a look at it when I get home, so I'll edit this post then.