Scrambling reporters, demanding editors, pressured production associates and instructor Sarahmaria Gomez pounding her fist on the Fisk Auditorium podium can only mean one thing: Web week.

Web Week is the annual event during the last week of the journalism program at the National High School Institute. Students work together to design, create and build a multimedia Web site in just three days.

Students apply to work on various teams, including the production team which designs and builds the Web site, the multimedia team which produces videos, podcasts and photo slide shows, and the editorial team which creates stories for the site.

The cherub Web site has been around for 10 years, but last year was the first year that all 88 cherubs worked on the Web site.

“Last year was the first year we started revealing cherub secrets,” Gomez said. “We started sharing what happens at cherubs.”

The Web site, which was led this year by Gomez and guest instructor Mary Lou Song, brings together everything cherubs learned and experienced throughout their five weeks. Students learned about broadcast, photography, writing and reporting, all of which were featured on the Web site.

“There’s not another medium that can do all of that,” Song, co-founder of Tokoni, a Web site where users can share their personal stories, said. “And there's not a better way for cherubs to showcase everything that they learn at the program.”

Gomez said Web Week is an intense way to sum up the learning of the past five weeks.

“It’s a really hard push at the end of the program that is like a virtual yearbook for their time at cherubs,” Gomez said.

The Web site is also used as a learning experience.

“I hope cherubs walk away with online skills that they can take back to their school Web sites, personal Web sites, or to college with them,” Song said. “It helps show future employers that young journalists are comfortable with multimedia and the web environment.”

Ashlee Fukushi, of Woodbury, Minn., had never used Dreamweaver before and wanted to gain experience with it.

“I’m actually supposed to build my high school newspaper’s Web site when I get home,” Fukushi said. “I wanted to be a part of the production team so I could learn what works and what doesn’t.”

Fukushi learned through working on the Web site by trial-and-error.

“It would be going a lot faster if I knew what I was doing,” she said. “But it’s that weird sense where you hate it when you’re doing it, but it feels good to have figured it out.”

While working on the Web site, cherubs also learn what it is like to work in a busy environment and work as a team, Song said.

“It’s a lot like working in Corporate America,” she said. “Cherubs have to work together, as a team, so the entire project can succeed.”

The Web site home page was designed by Sam Wagreich, of Los Angeles. He and six cherubs submitted home page designs in a contest. Cherubs voted for their favorite design. Wagreich had experience with web design. He designed his school newspaper’s Web site. But he said he had his doubts about winning after he saw the competition in the contest. He stuck with the basics and kept his design simple. And his design won.

“I’ve learned to deal with levels of stress I’ve never experienced before [as a production associate],” Wagreich said. “I’m going off of five hours of sleep.”

Wagreich also said he has learned how to be “someone who people go to” and how to help everyone while still getting his own work done.

Gomez said they try to expose cherubs to a little bit of everything. Even those who will never work in the Web industry can learn what web designers go through and learn to appreciate them, she said.

“They will never take web designers for granted,” Gomez said. “It’s much harder than it looks.”