The world is now able to catch a glimpse of Ames High School because of the work of a club of students at the school.

The students recently created the school’s first homepage on the World Wide Web. “I thought it was an opportunity for the school to be seen as advanced in technology, and it helps alumni get in touch with other class members,” said J.C. Elbert, who organized the club.

The homepage includes a picture of the high school, historical information about the school system and listings of alumni’s e-mail addresses.

“Right now there are 300 e-mail addresses listed from the classes of 1945 to 1995,” Elbert said.

The club began pushing for a Web page last year and got approval from school administration this past fall.

The club of seven students range from freshman to seniors. Elbert said she wanted to involve younger students so that they could add on to the page and update it in the future.

Mark DePristo, another senior who worked on the page, said that they had a relatively powerful connection to the Web at the high school, and he thought it would be exciting, interesting and useful to create their own homepage.

Outside of school, both students work with computers in their jobs.

Elbert created homepages for both the Ames Lab and the Ames Public Library after learning the process about two years ago.

She also has her own personal Web page that includes pictures of her family and friends and links to other pages she has written.

DePristo works for a research group at Iowa State setting up networks, installing networks and creating Web pages.

“I help them with long-term planning of what computers they should be looking at. It has certainly increased my knowledge of computers,” DePristo said.

DePristo also has his own Web page that includes his resume, interests and some of his own writings.

Both students had been exposed to computers for most of their lives.

“There had always been a computer in the house, I just grew up around it,” DePristo said.

Elbert said she was exposed early in school and was able to build a basic foundation to learn advanced computer skills.

DePristo believes that it is important for schools to give students experience with computers so they will have a fundamental understanding of them. “Just bringing people in to computer labs to type papers or do other things will help them later. Without that, computers can be very scary,” DePristo said.

Elbert said people should not be afraid of the Internet and the World Wide Web.

“It’s really exciting. It’s a chance for everyone all over to share information,” Elbert said.