SPC Yearbooks have launched two online tools which will make the whole process of collecting in content for your yearbook far quicker and easier, leaving you more time to concentrate on other activities!
With one online app to help you collect and edit yearbook student comments and another to help collect and organise pictures and other material, both make it really easy to share the task of editing and preparing your yearbook content.
Whether you are the only editor or one of a yearbook team, it’s easy to track changes. Once all information has been collected in, the SPC Yearbooks team has instant access – no need to send disks or USB drives by post!
The online apps are extremely easy to use and are available to customers using our professional design services or self-designed options (e.g. our Yearbook Creator software, Yearbook Designer Live! online app or your own software).
Collecting individual yearbook comments and photos
SPC Yearbooks can create an online form for you, to make it easy for all students to submit their individual comments and photos.
No logins required! All you have to do is share the link to the form with all the students and let them fill it in and submit. We will give you, the editor, a password so that you can view and edit all the yearbook comments in an online spreadsheet. You can also quickly view any photos that have been uploaded too. It’s also easy to share the spreadsheet with other people if you want a larger editorial team.
Your SPC Yearbooks account manager will automatically be an editor of your spreadsheet and is able to quickly see how you’re getting on and if you’re on track for your copy deadline (the date your content is required in so you can receive your yearbooks when you want to receive them).
What do we need to know?
There are a few questions your account manager will need to ask – these questions could perhaps be decided on in one of your first yearbook committee meetings. Here are the questions:
- Do you want people to answer in a comment box or would you prefer they answer a series of questions? (E.g. What is your nickname? What’s your funniest school memory? What do you want to be remembered for?)
- If you would like questions, what are these and do want to give individuals the choice of which questions they answer? How many questions does each person need to answer?
- How many students would you like to have per page? Download our ‘How To’ guide.
- Do you want individuals to upload a photo of themselves?
- Do you want us to set up another form for teachers? Perhaps you would prefer to ask them different questions or alternatively, just have a comment box for them.
Once you have answers to these questions, get in touch with your yearbook account manager and ask him/her to set up an online form and editor’s spreadsheet – simple!
Collecting in yearbook content for ‘other pages’ or content generally
SPC Yearbooks have an online workspace where you and selected others can drop yearbook content into various folders. The advantage of having an online workspace is that it’s multi-user, multi-location and again, takes away the hassle of sending content to SPC Yearbooks. If you decide to use the online form and editor’s spreadsheet, you may also want to use our online workspace for montage photos and content for ‘other pages’. If you’re not using an online form as well, there’ll be additional folders set up for you in your online workspace where you can insert staff and student comments/photos. Just ask an SPC Yearbooks account manager to share a relevant master folder with you and you can get going collecting in your content right away.
If you wish to learn more about our online solutions to collecting in content, please get in touch via email: yb@spc-yearbooks.co.uk or by phone, 01480 410 435.
There are many ways to collect in collage/montage photos for your yearbook – an increasingly popular way is by subscribing to free online ‘photo sharing’ sites such as Facebook, Photobucket, Picasa and Flickr (to name but a few) and setting up collaborative photo albums wherein everyone in your school year is able to drop in yearbook photos. Online collaborative photo albums take away the hassle of emailing content to an individual or set of individuals, enable groups to see one another’s photos, work on the go and socially interact. On the whole, you will find that most sites have the same basic set of tools. They are also in a continual quest to make their site stand out from the rest, which often results in new features that just may make your job as a yearbook creator a whole lot easier – so it’s worth doing a bit of research to see which company’s services will best suit your needs.
