Sahara Locke
Published: April 12, 2006
If you have visited the PJC Web site since returning from Spring Break, you have noticed that a transformation has taken place: a new look, a new feel, a new style, and a new mode of navigation throughout the site. The new Web site and its accompanying Spyglass have been made the official representatives of PJC online.
The change, brought about and inspired by Liz Gomez of Microcomputer Resources, is an attempt to make the navigational chores of the Web site less intimidating and “super student friendly,” Alice Crann Good, PJC’s information specialist, said. But aside from the fact that the site has changed visually, there is an added feature of convenience that is boasted proudly by Gomez and Cran Good and all others responsible for the new face of PJC.
A spyglass is usually thought of in terms of sailing ships and piracy, which in PJC’s case makes its use quite sensible. The Spyglass is the name given to the icon that appears on many of the web pages throughout the site.
Its purpose is to give students easy access to their records. Before Spyglass, the back button on the computer screen was the student’s best friend when having to check his or her records or register for classes.
Now instead of repeated and often slow and tiresome clicks of the back button one simple click of the Spyglass immediately brings up the registration screen. A very handy device, since according to one student, “it saves a lot of time.”
The spyglass was chosen simply because it coincides with PJC’s pirate theme, plus it was a way to finally name the only nameless representative of PJC online. “Spyglass is to PJC’s Web site what Argos is to UWF’s Web site,” Martha Caughey, director of admission and registration, said.
But more than just an icon for easy navigation, the Spyglass “was selected to represent a focus on the future of PJC students” Crann Good said.
In other words, just as a spyglass is capable of spotting things afar before even reaching them, the PJC Spyglass is a figurative representation of students seeing their goals and dreams afar and executing a journey to get to them.