Okay, so we messed up, and didn't get the Star School of the Month up until April 8. We'd like first to apologize for having let it go for a week, and then explain: we're not just college students on top of employees, we're also graduating, which means we're fairly swamped with studies at the moment. That doesn't excuse us from completely failing to get it up when we said we would (and no, no one's harassed us about it -- this is purely out of our own well-developed sense of guilt), but we do hope that helps you understand why. Now, on with the show.

Why do we like Pekin's site?

Another month, and another two dozen schools submitted whose websites look absolutely amazing. It's a good thing we're graduating soon -- someone else can be left to raise the standards of the Star School of the Month even higher than they are now. It took hours of going through websites and trying to find fault in order to pick between them, and even that was impossible. In the end, it came down to that gut feeling which cannot be described in here text, an "oomph" that the Pekin site had which caused us for whatever reason to keep hitting that back button and scanning through it with an admiring eye.

If you haven't been to see the site yet, go. Now. It loads in the blink of an eye, despite attractive layout and a high graphics to text ratio. Not only is it fast, though, it's attractive. One's aesthetics would have a long row to hoe before finding something to offend, here. The navigation bar on the left hand side of the front page stays with you, wherever you go, and doesn't sit there and reload every time you choose a new location to visit, or click the back button. This is a time-saver and an eye-pleaser we cannot commend highly enough. Additionally, the information which is there is similarly pleasing to the eye. Text is big, solid black on a background of white so there's never any doubt of readability. Accenting graphics and illustrative photographs are, once you're into the "meat" of the site, not only attractive, they're small and tasteful. It's clear, once past the front page, that the emphasis on this site will be information which is useful, easily consumed and pleasingly accented, not overwhelmed with graphics.

Another fact which stood out when we were reviewing the site was the frequency with which it's updated, and by whom. Reviewed, renewed and edited daily, the work is done by a teacher and her Junior Webmasters, a collection of fourth, fifth and sixth grade students. This only serves to make the eye-pleasing work stand out all the more as a job well done, and lets us know that they live up to the statement on their website that "technology is an integral part of [their] school curriculum."

Easily navigable, fast as the Internet should be, loaded with useful information for everyone in the Washington Intermediate School community, pleasing to the aesthete in us all and regularly updated by the students whose image it projects to the world; Washington Intermediate School has it all.

Who are the people behind Washington Intermediate School's site?

Madeleine Decker, mdecker@pekin.net, is a sixth grade teacher at Washington Intermediate School and the webmaster. Her assistants are fourth, fifth and sixth grade students of the same.