SlidesYearbook Printing & Student Portraits

When I share the SlidesYearbook with fellow teachers, I am asked two major questions: 1) Where do I print our yearbooks and 2) What do we do with student individual portraits?

Printing

As the largest K-8 School District in California, we are privileged to have an incredible Duplicating Department that owns at Xerox 1000 Color Press. The covers are soft-bound. We can print these yearbooks on demand and at cost.

If you are not fortunate to have your own color press at the district office, I have located a few self-publishing companies for you. Just this week, my father's hard-bound autobiographies printed by Gorham Printing were delivered. The more books you purchase, the better the price. The downside is the time requirement for printing and shipping.

Individual Student Portraits

Small School

If you have a small school, you can use a portrait template using a template. Make sure change the background that follows your theme. Here is another example of a template using Slides Carnival Quintus . 

In both examples, make sure that your Google Drive account is open. Then go to File -> Make a copy to use the template for your school. When you click on the image, a new menu appears. Select Replace image to add each student picture.

To save even more time and money, use the Snapshot option in Google Slides and your computer's webcam. 

Idea - each class can be in charge of their own class page! What if a student does not like their picture? Retake it another day using the same background (curtains or green screen) at the same distance from the computer. If the class does not need the full two pages for portraits, they can add group pictures of their choice.

Large School

The above solution is not practical for my school of 600 students. At our school, we use Lifetouch Image Stream software. Once school pictures are taken by Lifetouch, they send us a link to download the pictures using their software. The pictures are organized by class (elementary) or grade level (junior high) and saved as a pdf. Those pdf pages are changed to pictures with a transparent background using Adobe Photoshop.

Last year our school did not use the transparent option and the student portrait pages were very bland. Due to scheduling, I do not have the yearbook elective, but I am talking to this year's advisor and sharing lessons learned.

Conclusion

Paying $25, $40 or even $75 for a school yearbook is unnecessary when you self-publish. The Slides Yearbook Innovator project empowers your students to become graphic designers, photographers, and publishers.

I am grateful for after school students and Mike Frazier, the Supervisor of BCSD Duplicating services, for helping me share this product with you.