An interactive yearbook is a digital way to record the activities and accomplishments of a class over the school year. It can include photos, videos, audio recordings, and scanned work. Creating an interactive yearbook engages students and allows them to contribute in a motivating and collaborative way. PowerPoint is commonly used as it allows embedding various media types and can be saved to CD for viewing on other computers. Additional equipment like digital cameras, microphones, and a CD burner are needed to produce the interactive yearbook.

1. Creating an Interactive Yearbook Malcolm Wilson ICT Curriculum Development Officer Falkirk Council Education Services

2. What is an Interactive Yearbook? A way of recording the activities of your class over a year Pupils and parents can share in what has happened in the school Photographs, recordings of pupil voices, film and scanned copies of work can all be included Several schools in the Falkirk area have successfully used the commercial interactive yearbook product from the Denny company Inform Interactive: www.inform-interactive.co.uk/yearbook/index.html Other commercial interactive yearbook suppliers: www.yearbookinteractive.com www.creativeideas.net/en/13.html

3. Why create an Interactive Yearbook? Enterprising activity in line with A Curriculum for Excellence Hugely motivating involving all pupils in contributing their thoughts and work Collaborative task-centred learning - assigning roles of planner, chairperson, editor, photographer, archivist, interviewer, etc. as well as including work and views of all pupils

4. What might you see in an interactive yearbook? Photograph of school/badge Links to each class Each class has pages – record of whole-class activities throughout year, audio or video of class activity, e.g. song, recitation, presentations or talks. Each pupil has pages – scanned images of written work, photographs of craft, technology, art work, special awards throughout year, etc. Audio narrated text by pupils over their photographs.

5. Why use Powerpoint? Every school already has Powerpoint on computers. Pupils are already building up skills in this software. Allows for inserting organisation charts, photographs, scanned images, audio narration, video and animations. Can be saved to CD for presentation on computers without Powerpoint.

6. What else do you need? Digital camera (e.g. Sony Mavica) Digital video camera (e.g. Digital Movie Creator from Digital Blue) – this also acts as your microphone (though you may have a separate microphone). Collect photographs, or take pictures throughout the year. Record video and sound as year progresses. Computer storage on the network Software for editing photographs (e.g. Colour Magic), audio (Audacity) and video (Windows Movie Maker or Digital Blue Digital Movie Creator) – all available on primary networks A CD-rewriter device for copying the finished yearbook to CDs (e.g. at time of writing external model LGGSA2166D was around £40 – this also does dual layer DVDs).

7. Template for Interactive Yearbook Falkirk Primary School Session 2006-7 About the school Our class Class Trips Classroom activities Class topics Class assembly What we hope for What we liked best

8. Inserting action buttons Click on Slide Show – Action Buttons – Action Button: Custom Choose where you wish to place action button and hold down left-hand mouse button on screen while dragging mouse to desired size of button, then release mouse button Choose “Hyperlink to” and select “Slide….” – highlight desired slide and then click OK.

9. Inserting photographs Click on Insert – picture – from file – browse through your computer to find where you saved your photograph then click insert. Click on photograph then choose crop tool to crop any unwanted parts of a photograph by dragging black crop handles at edges of photographs If picture toolbar does not appear then click on View – Toolbars – Picture. Other tools in Picture toolbar will allow adjusting brightness, contrast, adding line frame. Experiment with each to achieve desired result – undo button allows for changing back any unwanted effect. Lastly choose Compress Pictures button and OK to reduce the file size of your photograph (uncompressed the photographs take up more memory – compressed photographs take up less memory and more will fit on the finished CD).

10. Recording narration Pupils can add speech which will play back when viewing selected pages. This can be done in three ways: Using a microphone attached to the computer (the Digital Movie Creator digital video camera acts as a microphone) select Insert – Movies and Sounds – Record Sound. Name the file, then press the red record button and speak into the microphone. Press the stop button and press OK. The sound will play in the Powerpoint page when the speaker icon is clicked. Using the microphone attached to the computer select Slide Show – Record Narration – click OK then record. This will play back when the page is opened. Record speech in either Audacity or Windows Sound Recorder. Save the file in your “My Documents”. Insert into the Powerpoint page through Insert – Movies and Sounds – Sound From File.

11. Adding film Digital video stored on your computer can be added by clicking on Insert – Movies and Sounds – Movie from file. Select “automatically” or “when clicked” to choose how you wish the movie to play. Note that video files take up huge amounts of memory and therefore when making a copy of video for inserting into Powerpoint it is recommended that it is saved at low quality or “for web” setting which uses less memory.

12. Preparing finished yearbook Test on another computer before making any more copies to ensure everything, especially photographs, movies and sounds files, all work Click on File – Package for CD… Click on Options and ensure all boxes are ticked to include all files, linked files and fonts. This will include the Powerpoint viewer which means it will play even if the user’s computer does not have Powerpoint. Click OK. You will only be able to write to CD if you have a CD-writer installed or attached to your computer – an external CD/DVD re-writer can be connected to the computer (these can be purchased for about £40 if you do not already have this facility).