Two students from Jeddah’s Effat College were among the winners in a nationwide website competition recently. The Saudi Computer Society in conjunction with the National Information Technology Plan organized a workshop recently titled “A Future Look at Women and Information Technology.”

The workshop, held at the King Abdul Aziz Library in Riyadh, took place under the auspices of Princess Hessa Al-Shaalan, the wife of Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard. The princess also announced the winners of the competition. “The goal of the workshop was to update and familiarize women, whether they are working or not, on various ways of using information technology,” said Dr. Siham Babtain, the coordinator of the event. “There is a need to train women on how to benefit from IT in the best way and show how IT can provide employment and business opportunities for women in the home,” she told Arab News.

The workshop looked at future potential of IT in education and employment for women, eliminating computer illiteracy among women and children, and computer training to develop women’s skills.

“Computers need to be introduced in our schools at an early stage and be used as a tool and not simply taught as a subject. We also suggested having a computer club or association for women to continue developing their skills and knowledge,” Dr. Babtain said. Another topic discussed in the workshop was women’s experience in creating websites and the problems they face in designing and developing the websites. At the end of the workshop, awards were presented to the winners of a website design competition.

“We received 90 entries from women from all over the country, out of which we nominated 10 to compete for the top three,” Dr. Babtain said.

The winner of first place was Kholood Abdul Aziz for her www.al-marsam.com website for art and artists, followed by Maryam Al-Metairi and Sarah Al-Harbi for the www.salamah.net website for children and safety. Sufana Madani and Amjad Engawi came third for their www.jeddah-ksa.com website. The top three received certificates and cash awards, the other seven participants got certificates.

The www.jeddah-ksa.com website means to fill a gap on the web. “There is a song about Jeddah that I like, and thought of having a website to go with it. Besides I couldn’t find anything on the web about old and new Jeddah,” Sufana said. It took her and Amjad, from Effat College in Jeddah, two months to complete their site. “We came up with three designs and changed things many times until we finally decided on a picture and colors for the site,” Amjad said.

Their website also won the Golden Web award in the International Association of Web Masters and Designers Competition for 2003. “We focused on old Jeddah. You can find malls and restaurants everywhere, but we included all these modern facilities to make the website complete as a tourist guide,” said Sufana. They did everything without help from their teachers. “We learned Micromedia Flash to do the animation on our own because we hadn’t taken any multimedia classes yet,” Amjad said.

“We’re very proud of them,” said Dr. Haifa Jamal-Allail, the dean of Effat College. “It’s a way to connect them to the market early so that they know what is there,” she said. “We are promoting the website at the chamber of commerce to be used as a tourist guide during the Jeddah Festival and to make our students participate in designing other websites for the chamber,” she said.