Two Fantastic Sites - Created by H.S. students


This article is a review of two web sites co-created and created by a group of John F. Kennedy High School computer graphics students from the Bronx. It is my understanding that most of these students are between 15 and 16 years of age. They of course, received help from their teacher but did a lot of the work themselves. They have also obviously done some serious research and studying for these sites too.

The first site I want to discuss is the Learning About Leonardo site located at http://library.advanced.org/13681/data/d... on the web. This site is a "multidisciplinary science driven web-based ThinkQuest project" according to teacher Steve Feld. This site was co-created by students from the Bronx and Sweden.

This site is packed with some neat graphics. When you enter the home page be sure to wait and read the message scrolling in the top message box. From there you can go to the site map located near the bottom of the first page but you will find it much more fun and interesting to click on the Vitruvian Hands.

Oh my goodness! The first place I clicked to is the Da Vinci Music page. From here you can actually listen to some of Da Vinci's work. I found the most exciting item on this page to be the inclusion of sign language for the deaf and hard of hearing. They have also included links for the hard of hearing. How Awesome this is! Kudos to the students for including these folks. Not many sites do this and I think the fact that high school students thought of it speaks highly of these teen web site creators. Be sure to listen to the music, it is an internet exclusive.

There is another Vitruvian Hand that will take you to a page where the Mona Lisa is discussed. Specifically, who is Mona Lisa and why is she smiling, a theory presented from Lillian Shwartz, a noted computer graphics and art pioneer. I found this to be extremely interesting. I am not going to say more so that you can find out for yourself. I noticed that this page can be brought up in both the Spanish and Russian language. You simply have to go and check out this theory! Another thing to note would be that Leonardo's portrait of An Unknown Musician has supposedly been solved as well. I am not going to give any more details because I think it will be more fun to find out the information for yourself from this site.

The copyright of the article Two Fantastic Sites - Created by H.S. students in Teaching Computer Skills is owned by Cheryl Lewis. Permission to republish Two Fantastic Sites - Created by H.S. students in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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