The Boone Tribune is the accomplishment of 34 eighth-graders in the Daniel Boone Middle School. We're located in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania, just outside of Reading and about 50 minutes northeast of Philadelphia.
This is the middle school's first year in the Daniel Boone Area School District. Previously, we were a junior high and shared a building with the senior high. We also shared a school newspaper. When a new high school was constructed for use in the 1998-99 school year, it was connected to the old building, which became the sole domain of 625 sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders. When the high school students and staff moved to the new building, they took the school newspaper with them. To fill that void, we decided to construct what we are told is a novel concept at a middle school -- an online newspaper.
Several months and more than 40 web pages later, The Boone Tribune (the name was chosen by the staff) entered cyberspace in March. Stories were assigned and written on deadline. However, we struggled with several web page programs and were delayed by several unfortunate events that can only be best described as "glitches." We have settled on Claris Home Page as our program, and we promise our next edition will be more timely and eye-catching.
We have had the full backing of our principal, Mr. David Blozowich, and some much-needed help from several teachers. Mrs. Mary Ann Conway has allowed us to invade her computer labs and annoy her on an almost daily basis. Miss Amy Richard has provided student art for our Art pages. Teachers, on a volunteer basis, have written their own updates for our Classroom Notes section. Our district computer gurus, Mr. Mike Jacobs and Mrs. Kay Rezac, have guided us through the confusing waters of html language and uploaded our paper to the district server.
Several students deserve credit as well. Our main page was designed by Pete Trate, who is a web master in the making. The bulk of our sections were put together by John Schiel, and our photos were coordinated by Eric Hein. Johnny Rice, Pat Yost and Bill Tate provided the "grunt" work that glued the 'Trib' together.
We hope you enjoy our first venture onto the Net and bookmark the site. We want you to return.
Todd Sherman, advisor