Jackson Heights High School principal Darren Shupe (left) and Heights technology director Vern Andrews recently took a look at pages from the JHHS 1990 yearbook - the year Shupe graduated from the school - as it is displayed in the school's new digital "alumni center" in the commons area. The center will be available for browsing at Sunday's JJH graduation ceremony, Andrews said.

Digital "alumni center" up and running at Heights

This Sunday, when Jackson Heights High School alumni return to their old alma mater for the Class of 2015’s graduation, they will have the opportunity to share memories of their own high school years with their families.

A new “digital memory board,” which Heights technology director Vern Andrews said will serve as a “Jackson Heights Alumni Center,” went online at the school on Monday, and visitors to the school will be able to browse school yearbooks that date back to the school’s opening in the 1969-70 school year.

JHHS Principal Darren Shupe, a member of the school’s class of 1990, is pleased to have the alumni center up and running.

“This is something we’ll have for them when they come back for ball games and other activities,” Shupe said.

Andrews said that at the present time, only the yearbooks are available for browsing. But as time goes on, the alumni center will also include the class “composite” photos — the panels that contain all of the senior pictures from a graduating class — as well as information on the school’s history.

The center was devised to replace the “flip through” collection of class composite photos, Andrews noted.

“Our composite display was full, and it was a case of what are we going to do, since there’s no more space,” Andrews said. “The last two or three senior classes weren’t in there. My suggestion was to go with something high-tech and make an interactive display board.”

The display board — a 55-inch HDTV with a touch screen mounted horizontally — works “like a giant smartphone,” he said. Yearbooks from Jackson Heights’ history, all the way back to the 1970 yearbook, can be accessed, and photos and text can be zoomed in or out, although Andrews added there is still some fine-tuning to be done.

With the exception of the yearbooks, which were scanned in by an Oklahoma inmate organization that performs the task for school districts, Andrews said all the work on the alumni center was done by school students and staff. JHHS graduating senior Seth Holliday is scanning class photos and composites, he said, and JHHS student Jonathan Reiff is preparing the scanned images for display.

“The composites aren’t in there yet,” Andrews said. “We’re still working on getting those done.”

In addition to the yearbooks and class composite photos, Andrews said the alumni center will eventually include history of the school, which originally served as an Atlas missile base before being converted into a school in the late 1960s, as well as a “where are they now?” feature for the composites.

“If our alumni buy into the idea, it would be really neat to get it where you click on a senior picture in a composite, and it would show what that person looks like now,”Andrews said.

Shupe said he would also like to include information from the district’s four communities — Circleville, Netawaka, Soldier and Whiting — whose schools merged to form the Jackson Heights school district.

“I think it would also be nice to have a ‘scrapbook’ section, for newspaper clippings that recognize our students and our teams,” Shupe added.

The Holton Recorder

109 W. Fourth St.
Holton, KS 66436
Phone: 785-364-3141
 

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