Digital Technologies Learners Bring Local Heritage Book to a Digital Audience

Boston College’s Digital Technologies Learners have spent the last 4 month creating designs for a website version of the new local heritage book ‘Boston – The Small Town with a Big Story’.

‘Boston – The Small Town with a Big Story’ is the idea of Boston Borough Councillor, Richard Austin, who felt there has never been a book covering the entire history of the town. The book covers 55 individual topics and was written by a team of contributors.

The authors of the book approached the College’s Digital Technologies Department to see if the learners would be interested in working on a live brief and building a website version of the book.

The learners split into groups to start working on the brief and created concept designs, with the top four being selected to go forward to a judging panel, taking place at the Boston Guildhall Museum. The judging panels consisted of Cllr Richard Austin, Editor David Radford, and Michelle Sacks, Deputy Chief Exec of Boston Borough Council.

Once the panel has provided their feedback, the learners will then enter the final build stage for the successful concept design. Each learner will be provided with a topic from the book and they will build the relevant webpages for the site.

Speaking of the project, Gary Chapman-Jones, Digital Technologies Lecturer, said, “The Level 3 Digital Technologies Learners have been plunged into a difficult yet rewarding project that gives them first-hand experience working with clients to build a website that represents the history of Boston. The learners who have studied throughout the on-going pandemic, that has been disruptive to their education, and had little to no experience of website development, have worked to the highest professional standard, gaining both valuable academic skills and industry experience that they should be proud to shout about.”

As well as gaining value real-life work experience, each learner was kindly gifted a copy of the book. For more information on the Digital Technologies Courses at Boston College, please visit our Digital Technologies course page.