Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Saratoga High School web designers Clara Yang and Bradley Block put a car chase on sheriff's page.
Students design substation website
Flashing sirens and car chases add drama to site
By Leigh Ann Maze
The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office Westside Substation's website is updated and online thanks to two Saratoga High School seniors. Bradley Block and Clara Yang, both in Barbara Reeder's web design class at SHS, created the new website for the sheriffs, complete with animated graphics of flashing sirens and a car chase.
The website is only for the Westside Substation in Saratoga and not for the Santa Clara County Sheriff's as a whole. It contains information about current crime problems in Saratoga and surrounding cities, detectives, school resource officers, community resource officers and current projects the sheriffs are working on.
It details who the sheriffs are and what areas they cover from the Santa Cruz Mountains, to Cupertino, Saratoga and Los Altos. Most importantly, the website gives the community a chance to better understand local law enforcement and an opportunity to ask questions and give feedback to the sheriffs.
There are several links on the site to other law enforcement, the fire department, local news webpages and the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office main website.
In Reeder's web design class, students learn HTML coding and website design. They practice their skills by creating and maintaining the high school's website.
Deputy Kevin Greig of the Westside Substation approached Reeder with the idea of some students creating a new sheriff's website. Reeder assigned the task to Yang and Block for their combined strengths. "I saw a good combination of student talent there," Reeder said.
Block has excellent computer design skills from using computers frequently as he was growing up. Yang, an accomplished pianist, has the ability to complete difficult tasks with a great attention to detail. "She is a very bright young woman," Reeder said. Neither Block nor Yang had ever used HTML coding before taking Reeder's class.
Both students said they had a lot of fun designing the website. It took Block and Yang six weeks of combined effort, and lots of feedback from the sheriff's, to complete the website.
"The sheriffs gave us most of the information, we just figured out how to present it in a better way," Block said.
Since it was completed, the website has been uploaded to the sheriff's server. The sheriffs can now update the website on their own.
"The project benefited us with a new website, gave the students some working experience and made another access point for the community to talk with us," said Capt. Jeff Miles of the Westside Substation.
According to Miles, the new website averages 45 visitors each day, and he hopes to see that number grow.
SHS and Reeder's web design class have hosted the Sheriff's Office Westside Substation's website for the past two years. A team of seniors in Reeder's class also created the first website.
"When we designed the first site two years ago, the sheriffs didn't really know what they wanted," Reeder said. "They said make us a website that we'll like."
Now, two years later, under new leadership and with their own server, the sheriff's asked for a new site and had a better idea of what they wanted.
For a little class credit and some working web design experience, Yang and Block were able to provide the sheriffs with the site they wanted, for the benefit of the community at large.
The Sheriff's Office Westside Substation website, designed by Clara Yang and Bradley Block is www.santaclarasheriffwest.org.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
