VANCOUVER, Wash. – On April 9 at 11:00 a.m., Clark College will celebrate both the natural and digital worlds at its annual Arbor Day event, as it adds two new trees to the campus’s beautiful arboretum and unveils a new, student-designed website that uses digital technology to catalog that arboretum. The new online map will allow visitors to instantly access descriptions of most trees on campus through their mobile devices.
The mobile-friendly online map is the product of work done by students in Clark’s spring 2013 Web Design II class. The students worked with the college’s Campus Tree Advisory Committee to identify trees in the campus’s extensive arboretum, which includes such notable trees as a six-decade-old Scarlet Oak and 100 Shirofugen blossoming cherry trees donated to the campus by Japanese businessman John Kageyama in 1990. Students then GPS-tagged each tree and added it to the map with information about its genus and species. Additional students contributed to the project in subsequent quarters, with faculty from both the Computer Graphics Technology and the Computer Technology departments providing guidance.
“I look forward to the sight of Clark College denizens and those in the community at large walking across campus consulting their phones and tablets to find the answer to ‘What kind of tree is this?'” said Computer Technology Department Head Robert Hughes, who also teaches in the Computer Graphics Technology program. “Project-based client work has been a component of our graphics and web-related curriculum for a long time. These types of experiences are helpful as our students move into the workforce.”
The Spring Clark College CGT 206 Web Design II project team that developed this app were:
Gus Torres: Instructor
Project Lead: Jaime Wright
Lead Designer: Marina Kaminskaya
Lead Developer: David Edenholm
Design Assistant: Julie Morrell
Development Assistant: Teri Talbot
Additional production contributions made by students Jake Brosius, Chris Masoner, and Christine Thompson.
Additional Faculty coordination and support by Bruce Elgort, Robert Hughes and Kristl Plinz.
Bruce Elgort 