Hello!
My name is Matthew Jones and I’m a graduating senior, majoring in Communication Arts here at Cab. Over the past year I have completed my capstone Digital Media 4 project, which encapsulates all that I’ve learned the past four years. Rather than a typical project, such as a short film or portfolio website, this past year I have worked closely with Mr. Greider, other school staff and administration, and students to complete a variety of different digital media based projects around the school and school community. These include building, maintaining, and preparing the brand new videography and photography studio for student use; helping to code and maintain the communication arts website; creating and updating instructional support material for digital media students in topics ranging from how to create a contact sheet for photographs to how to direct a live stream of a production in the theatre; updating the school website with bug fixes and features to enhance the user experience and provide more information to the school community; directing all live streams that have happened this year; helping to maintain the school social media and website news to keep the community informed about events around Cab; assisting the Cab Calloway School Fund in launching a new website; and more small projects around the school to keep things running smoothly!
While a lot of my work is done behind the scenes to make it easier for students and staff to get things done, here are a few of the things I’ve done that you may or may not have noticed on the Cab website!
- The calendar page is completely revamped to make it easier to read on mobile phones, and provides you a quick and easy way to add the school’s calendar to your phone’s calendar!
- You can now sort and search within the staff directory to find exactly who you need to find quickly and efficiently.
- Cab website managers and administrators can issue emergency and important notifications through pop-ups, such as school closures or schedule changes.
- There is a new “Newspaper” tab on the front page that showcases student written articles published directly by the Calloway Chronicle.
- News now shows on the front page on the mobile website so you no longer have to navigate to the news page to see what’s going on at Cab when on the go.
- The News, Cab Calloway Chronicle, and Dean’s Memo pages now all have links to an archive page of every news article, Chronicle article, and Dean’s Memo published so you can always find the information you’re looking for!
- Subheaders for news articles now show up on the article’s page to give you more information about what you’re reading!
- There are more pages to provide you exactly the information you need, such as the new bell schedules page.
- The mobile website is optimized to give you more room to view the content on the screen!
- The website is now more secure than ever! The website is now SSL encrypted (https:// instead of http://) and the website backend code is fully up to date.
- There are a million small tweaks all around the website to make it more user friendly and easier to look at and use!
As my time at Cab Calloway come to an end, I wish to thank the Cab staff, administration, parents, community, and my fellow students for fostering an amazing environment to learn in, and for giving me a second home for the past seven years. With everything I’ve done in Digital Media 4 and beyond, I hope that I help make Cab Calloway a better place, even if it’s one tiny step at a time.
-Matthew Jones Class of 2019