Gabriel Weber

Using the new website, freshman Lilly Bucher navigates the district homepage to find West High.

Parkway’s website transition took 100’s of estimated hours, beginning at the start of the school year with a volunteer team of eight individuals. The process was labeled as extensive with page after page of content to transfer from the old to the new site.

According to Parkway West’s Technology Specialist Hal Brown, the website switch was caused because Blackboard, the website that owned Edline bought out Schoolwires, a website to help design professional websites then phased out Edline.

“The company that owned the product we were using, Edline, bought out Schoolwires. So, they suddenly had two competing companies that they now owned. So, it’s not really that we chose to go to a new one,” Brown said. “It’s that the other one was being phased out.”

Although the overall website has transferred, teachers have some time before they will need to update their pages. 

“We basically had to change [the website] within a year or so, although the teachers still have until the end of the school year to do so,” Brown said.

Since some teachers have not moved to the new website yet, there has been confusion on how to access important documents. Math teacher Christine Pfeiffer’s Algebra I students also have experienced trouble pulling up homework check information.

“It’s made for a rough start of the beginning of the semester because the banner at the top of my website says ‘This site has moved’ and redirects students to the new Parkway website,” Pfeiffer said.

According to freshman Madison Hoffmann, who uses the website frequently, all of the new changes are helpful and improve the look and accessibility.

“Once I get used to the new changes they will definitely be better, the new website looks more sleek. Plus it is much easier to find what I need, and I can use it on my phone now,” Hoffmann said.

There was a group of eight people volunteering their own days to make the switch happen, with Brown on the team along with Parkway’s Website Content Manager Dave Irby.

“The most noticeable difference with the new site is that fact that it is mobile friendly. Before, our previous website was very difficult to navigate mobily. With the new site, it’s designed to be on all different screen sizes and resolutions,” Irby said.

After hours spent revising and reformatting the district wide website, the only thing left to change are teacher pages.

“I can’t say we’ve had any problems with the new site, it’s just a learning curve,” Brown said.