Richland yearbook staff using technology to bring photos to life

ESSEX, Mo. -- The Richland High School yearbook staff is using technology to help pictures come to life.

The new program that will be utilized takes a photo, and when scanned with a smartphone app, starts playing video.

"It's a very new technology," said Kyle Carter, yearbook adviser and business teacher at Richland High School. "It is a program that allows you to take any photo, whether a photo in the yearbook, photo on a wall, photo on a program or a photo hanging in your house. You put your phone up to it, and using the app it starts playing a video.

"We are, as far as I know, the only ones to use it in southeast Missouri. There are a few schools in St. Louis that have dabbled in it."

Carter learned of the technology while at a convention where he was speaking. He was shown how it worked and said he was impressed enough to show it to his yearbook editors.

"I had to see it to believe it," said Liza King, page editor of the yearbook, which is called "The Rebel." "I really didn't think it would work. But when he showed me that it worked I was excited. I wanted to tell everyone in the school. It was just super cool."

The idea is to have video to go along with each of the senior photos in the upcoming edition of the yearbook, which will be released at the beginning of next school year. It will also be used to show video with sports pictures, band pictures and others.

"We plan on using it often in our yearbook, but we don't want to overuse it," King said, adding that an icon will appear in the bottom right hand corner of the picture, letting the viewer know it is a photo that contains video.

While it will be used in the yearbook, it is also being used around the school on posters that hang on the walls.

"Every month here we have a student of the month, and last month was Mayah Kennedy," explained King. "We will hang a picture of Maya Kennedy, showing she is student of the month, so we made a video of Maya, called Minute with Maya. I took the video on the app and overlaid it on her still photo. Then you can take your phone to the photo and listen to what she had to say."

The staff has also used the technology for sports posters such as volleyball and clay shooting and are hoping it can be used for game programs in the future.

While the videos are fun for the students to see, Carter said he also enjoys the extra educational opportunities it offers.

"The big thing for my staff is we're a yearbook staff," Carter said. "We've been writing, taking photos, paginating and that kind of stuff. We've never dealt with video. But now my kids are having to learn how to shoot video. They are learning how to edit audio and put all of that stuff together inside the internet program that is kind of the vacuum for that."

King said that now there is an added dimension to their duties when they are assigned an event.

"Now instead of just going to our volleyball games, taking pictures, we have someone go in and take a video of the game too, which is the video we put with the pictures," King added.

The staff began using the technology last summer and used last year's yearbook as a type of beta test while they worked out the kinks. Carter said the only real constraint right now is the size of the video, which is limited to 10 Mb. Still, it is enough video to awe students.

"I love watching students' reaction to it because every time they see it for the first time, they're amazed," Carter said. "They're impressed. They are really surprised that we have the technology and ability to do that."