Digital Student Scrapbooks

This year, instead of my normal end of the year memory books, I decided to digitize them. It was a LOT of work...many, many hours, but the results were worth it.

1st: I took LOTS of pictures throughout the year, field trips, parties and special projects and events.

2nd: I found a neat site called Smilebox.com

It has adorable scrapbook templates set up, but I found it to be a bit restrictive and not very user friendly. (Reason #1-you can't mix and match themes.) I had to search through all the templates to not only find the themes I wanted, but that had layouts that I could work with too. 8 pages max-so what I would do is create a page I liked for each event/page and then do the same thing for each student 1-8, then start over and save the next set as 9-17, etc. Then I had to save each set as .jpg pages. (You can't rename and it saves each time as the same names but in a different folder). I pulled these into folders on my computer I had labeled for each student--making it MUCH easier to upload to photo book site. (Teachers can get a FREE subscription to Smilebox.)

#3: I use Walmart.com for my Photo Books and they were ON SALE for $11 each - 20 page (10 pages front/back) softbound 8 1/2 x 11 book. I had to upload the first set of pictures, set up the book and then save it. After that, I just uploaded the next set of pictures and switched them out and saved as next student.



I also added a two page "yearbook" section with a picture of each student with their name and phone number below.

The last page had my picture and a special note to the child.

These were a great hit. The parents actually sent in the $11 so I did not have to pay for it.

I made one for myself with a few extra pages (I put ALL happy campers and extra pages from our USA program/unit.) Now I have it to show parents next year...and get them excited early on. That way they can save their pennies for it at the end.

Since I had to do the last page (our end of school beach party) after school was out, I put the books in the school office and had our secretary pass them out.

If this is something you are interested in doing, I'd be more than happy to help answer any questions.