Redwood High School is located in Larkspur, California. They are in the Tamalpais Union High School district, just north of San Francisco. The Tamalpais district consists of 5 schools -- three comprehensice and two alternative. One of the interesting things about this school district is that there is a computer literacy requirement for graduation. A student must take a computer literacy course or pass a computer literacy exam.

Redwood High School students are well-prepared for the literacy exam; Redwood offers computer science courses that span from Basic Computer Literacy to Advanced Programming -- VB, Delphi and C++.

The availability of technology resources is obvious in the work on the web page.

Why do we like this site?

This site it packed! There is information here about the school's history, the student body, athletic teams, literary magazines and other school resources. The Twig, a student newsletter published on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays, is also online.

Not only is this site full of information, it's also up-to-date. With so much information, it's often difficult to maintain good links. With redwood.org, there was little evidence of this problem. There was, however, evidence that the students involved in the project are aware of the timliness of it -- when I hit the site on the morning of October 20, the day's Twig was already up and ready. Way to go!

Like many high school web sites, this one is a learning ground for students interested in the technical sciences. The evidence here suggests that these young men and women are getting quite a head start on their competition. Buried within the pages here, you will find JavaScript, some CGI and Perl, and what appears to be VRML... or at least plans for it. This is no ordinary high school web site.

Who are the people behind this site?

The man behind the curtain at Redwood High School is none other than Dave Goldsmith, the computer resources teacher. Mr. Goldsmith teaches courses in Basic Computer Literacy, Web Page Design, and Computer Programming.

Mr. Goldsmith, however, insists he cannot take credit for the majority of the work done on the site. "Overall, I probably do about 10 percent of the work for the site; the students, by far, do most of it. For Redwood's site, every single Internet/Web Page Design class over the past two years has contributed to the site--that's over 120 students," he says. "It truly is a Web site that reflects our school, and the students are (for the most part) able to put online what they want."

The classes are not limited to upperclassmen -- students from 9th through 12th grade sign up and take the design courses.

If the links to Alumni pages are any indication (check out Erik Nygren, a Redwood Alum who now hail from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology!), Redwood High School students are going to be quite successful in the new age of technology.