EDITOR’S NOTE: Reflecting on the Past to Move Forward to the Future

The future comes with incorporation of new features that will enhance readers’ experiences.

With a century down and hundreds of years to go, students of Antioch Community High School and members of the Antioch community know how important it is to reminisce on the past to be successful in the future. One of the Tom Tom’s main focuses is and always will be telling the history of the school: the past, the present and the future. We, as a staff, believe it is important to learn and celebrate the Antioch community’s and ACHS’s rich history. However, it is equally important to look forward to the future—where community members, ACHS staff, my fellow peers and I want our town and our school to be in the next five, 10 and even 100 years.

To me, the past is fascinating. I love learning about what student life was like at ACHS when my parents, aunts and uncles attended the school. I love learning about what is the same and what is different. The contents of this issue focus in on what the town of Antioch and ACHS were like so many years ago, while discussing how far we came as a school and as a community in the present. We discussed topics such as fashion, famous Sequoits, rules and even the evolution of the ACHS/Lakes rivalry.

A large part of the future is the incorporation of new technology into everyday life, including into the Tom Tom. We started with the transition and expansion from a traditional newspaper to a glossy news- magazine and informative website. In our last issue, QR codes were included on almost every page for readers to scan on their cell phones and read even more of the Tom Tom’s latest news, perspectives, life- styles and sports stories. In this issue, as the Tom Tom reflects on the past, discusses the present and shares hopes for the future, we added another innovative piece to our magazine to enhance readers’ experience: “The Augmented Reality,” available through the app Aurasma.

We hope that the addition of augmented reality improves your reading experience as you uncover the past, present and future. After downloading the Aurasma app, a whole new world of experiences is open to the reader. This innovative new feature allows the reader to hold their phone over a part of the magazine page and have another story or graphic pop up on their screen, many of which come from our school’s past. We plan to continue using and adding different features in each issue in hopes of enhancing our interactions and communications with our readers, including members of the community, students and teachers.

Download Aurasma. Time travel back to the past to experience and reminisce the older life of our former Sequoits and Antioch community.