Many people, students of RHS or otherwise, know about The Rampage, RHS’s nationally acclaimed newspaper; running since January 1969. However, The Rampage has a little known sister-production: rockvillerampage.com.
The newly improved website features an organized layout that can help even the most web-challenged person look for exactly what they want. A tool bar at the top of the page has “news”, “feature”, “sport”, and “opinion” on the left and “multimedia”, “cartons”, and “archives” on the right, making quick work of sorting through articles in different sections.
In addition to the tool bar, there are buttons to the latest and most popular articles that update frequently, so there will always be new topics for users to explore. “A lot of high schools that have pretty good website… we’re one of the first ones to integrate convergence journalism,” said Journalism teacher and newspaper advisor Peter Daddone.
Few high schools have the technology and the number of staff to keep such a high-maintained site up and running. According to Daddone, an estimated seventy thousand people will visit rockvillerampage.com monthly, an impressive feat for a high school journalism website. Daddone hopes to make rockvillerampage.com the first of its kind to combine video, audio, and hard copy journalism.
Sold on rockvillerampage.com yet? Maybe this next fact will sway you: rockvillerampage.com has brand-new, never before seen video footage, in addition to the daily morning announcements. Rockvillerampage.com is also formatted for cell phones with an Internet connection, so viewers can read on the go.
Rockvillerampage.com took about 3 months to design by Daddone, 2005 editor-in-chief Daniel Chou and Rampage staff member Dylan Weiss. The website was modeled after revolutionary sites such as cnn.com and washingtonpost.com that have been putting up live video footage for breaking news to daily shows.
The new website is a welcomed change compared to the old website, which has long since needed a face lift. The new rockvillerampage.com is more interactive than its predecessor, with a wonderful selection of articles, videos, and photos all in an easy to use format giving the viewers of rockvillerampage.com the best of both worlds.
