A Brief History of the MISD Web Site
by Steven R. Staton

In 1997, I approached the MISD with the goal of contributing directly to the creation of a central MISD web site, corollary sites for each of the campuses that didn't already have sites, and to be involved in technology issues with the district. I created my MISD site and began the usual process of promoting it with the major search engines. Initially I thought I had the support of key persons in the MISD for this effort, but after a few months, it became apparent that my efforts were not welcome.

My first confrontation involved the reproduction of the MISD brochure that is sent out to all interested parties. I was told to remove the frontispiece which had a picture of students from Finch Elementary because the district had not received permission to put the image on the Internet. It turns out that they hadn't received permission to print it on a brochure, either. My presence at the Central Office became an aggravation rather than a welcome site, and relations with key personnel rapidly deteriorated.

Meanwhile, the district began to take an interest in putting some content on the web server it had purchased sometime before 1997. Instead of asking me to contribute, high school students were asked to create content for the MISD's central site. These same students were responsible for the MHS site, which was evolving as the students became more experienced in HTML. They quickly found my site, and essentially copied it. I asked one of the students about the project, and he reluctantly told me that they were submitting my content (he thought I would be upset). I told him that I was delighted, and that was the reason for doing it in the first place (I didn't really care how the content got used, as long as it was used).

The district officials who were pursuing this effort were not happy to find out that the site that they "approved" was, in fact, the one I had created. (This tells me just how often they actually used a web browser.) The current content on the site is a still essentially what the HS students took from my site, with some minor color changes and no attention paid to cleaning up the content/formatting.