Learning new languages is part of Carlton Jester’s ’13 passion – new computer programming languages, that is.

 
Jester ventured into computer programming before he came to Rivers. As a seventh grade student at The Meadowbrook School, he learned HyperText Mark-up Language (HTML) – the primary language used to build web pages – on his own and then went on to teach HTML to some of his Meadowbrook classmates.

 
“I like making complicated things easy,” said Jester.

Now, he is putting his knowledge to work at Rivers, most recently with the creation of the Rivers Fanzone, a website that provides a platform for up-to-the-minute scores for varsity athletic contests. Jester developed the site a few weeks before March break and wrote the code for it in just one night right before a few winter sports teams were slated to enter post-season play. The first day Jester launched the site it received about 100 visits.

 
“That [statistic] was kind of a shock,” he said.

 
That number ballooned to 700 visits and 300 unique visitors within a few days of the launch. Since then, he has worked on refining the site and coordinating its operations by tapping one person, usually the team manager, from each varsity team to input scores during games, meets, and matches. As the athletic contests are happening, each scorekeeper periodically inputs current scores on the Fanzone, which then displays the updates. Jester has also developed a corresponding Rivers Fanzone application for iPhones and iPads.

Last year, Jester took Charlie Harrison’s ’11 class on the programming language Python and then went on to teach himself several other programming languages this academic year. He now puts his skills to work as a member of Rivers’ robotics team too.

“I have really enjoyed programming for robotics,” he said. “I do the autonomous [programming], which makes the robot run by itself.”

Jester hopes to pursue a career in computer engineering and focus on upper-level programming. In the meantime, he will continue to work on refining the Fanzone, after already devoting more than 100 hours of his time to the development of the site and its corresponding application.

 
You can access the Rivers Fanzone via a button on the athletics page, directly by clicking here , or by downloading the Rivers Fanzone application on iTunes.