"Electronic Yearbooks Hit Utah Schools"
By  Jennifer Toomer-Cook
Deseret News,  November 1, 2000

...Forget flipping pages to see Johnny's class picture or fast-forwarding oodles of videotape to glimpse the state championship-winning basket.  Hardbound and video versions of high school yearbooks now have a little competition from the point-and-click world.

...Yearbooks can be lasered onto CD-ROMs with jammin' tunes and color video footage of the Halloween stomp, classmates receiving diplomas and, possibly hyperlinks to e-mail address alongside class photos.  Students--even in elementary school--can make these multimedia wonders by themselves, for free, and buy them for the same price as Madonna's new release.

..."It's a lot better than the video yearbook because it's a lot more organized," said Savanna Thompson, Skyline High student historian who is creating the school's first CD-ROM yearbook.  "I can click on the football site and see the coach giving the team a pep talk or an awesome play that they did."  These concepts have become a reality through Yearbook Interactive, based in Salt Lake City.

..."My favorite part about it was it's self-directed," said Jessica Baucom, Highland's 1999-2000 student yearbook editor and an architecture student at the University of Utah.  "It was pretty cool.  It was so new, I didn't know much about the stuff.  But I learned a lot."

..."The kids are excited," Williams said.  "But I think they are a little different than us.  They already have a chip in their brains.  They?re not afraid to dig into the software and they're excited about video-editing."

...Schools can work on electronic yearbooks all year, whereas hard-copy printing deadlines leave out most spring activities.  Highland decided to include graduation in its CD-ROM, produced between March and May with video, choir recordings and yearbook still shots.  The CD-ROMs replaced the school's traditional video yearbook.

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