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Friday, August 24, 2001
Yearbook Questions: --What about the cover? What can we do? Colors? Designs? Funky? Traditional? Have some art students design? --How many pages do we have? 16 color? 12 spot? Is that what the bid was for? --11 x 17 printer necessary? --Pagemaker 7.0? Yearbook To Do: 1. Editors 2. Theme: Could play off of Echo, repeating, looking back...might look at song titles..."Only Time", "Lazy Days", "One by One".. 3. Staff--Need to send out e-mail early on to teachers soliciting names for potential staff members. Hard-working, technology, want challenged, new ideas, artists, writers, etc. Also, ask English Department at first day meeting. 4. Story Ideas--Need to get something out to kids early about suggesting story ideas...in J class too. 5. Need to set pricing for ads and new guidelines (any profanities with ads or inapprop pictures will be returned...no exceptions) 6. Web forms for filling in senior info, getting info, policies, submitting ideas. Should create some yearbook pages on the site. 7. Put together a yearbook page with Blogger in it. Need to talk to Ed about hosting all that shit. For Yearbook Lab: Qty Description Price Total 2 Dell P-933 Computer (512K RAM, 40 Gig HD, 48x CD, 19” Monitor) @ $1,700 $3,400 1 Dell P-933 Computer (512K RAM, 40 Gig HD, 48x CD, 50x CDRW, 21” Monitor) @ $2,100 $2,100 2 Olympus C-2040 Zoom Digital Camera (ea. With add’l 8 MB Smart Card memory) @ $600 $1,200 1 Scanner @$200 $200 1 Printer @ $600 $600 3 Adobe PageMaker 6.5 @ $400 $1,200 3 Adobe Photoshop 6.0 @ $600 $1,800 Total $10,500 Thursday, August 23, 2001
Idea: If newspaper becomes curricular, maybe the journalism class becomes every other day for a half a year. Journalism Lesson: First day, have them write down 10 questions that they want answered about the class...since asking questions is what it's all about...then, as I call roll, have them ask one. HC Teacher Website: Have links to articles about education with a blogger discussion going on in the middle or side...e-mail staff weekly to remind. News, weather, etc...ask them what they want.. Journalism: Generating story ideas Teachers attending the 2001 ASNE High School Institute at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., say it's a real challenge to get their newspaper staffers to come up with story ideas. Since professional journalists are expected to develop the majority of stories that they work on, the teachers at the Institute brainstormed a few ways to get their students to take the lead. Here's a sampling: Regularly ask, "Are we writing stories that reflect the entire school and not just one group of students?" Brainstorm around a single topic. For example, a discussion about the school cafeteria could lead to stories on the nutritional values of the food, whether accommodations are made for vegetarians, why students tend to segregate themselves by race at the lunch tables, the hard work that cafeteria workers do for generally low wages, the selling of sodas and restaurant chain food in the cafeteria, efforts to recycle, etc. Another example is to build on an offhand comment like, "Biology class is so boring." Keep asking "why?" Interesting story angles will tumble out, such as outdated books, an overcrowded class, no labs, no funds for field trips, etc. Ask the students what their friends are talking about. While conducting a post-mortem of the current edition of the paper, be sure to ask which story was the big "talker" or piqued the most interest among readers? Get the students to break it down into why a particular story "clicked" with teens. On Monday, ask students what they did over the weekend. At one school, this led a story about how the lives of today's teens are busier than what their parents experienced during their youth, from less sleep to more hours spent at after-school jobs. Ask the students about their hobbies. Let them do almost all the talking! Wednesday, August 22, 2001
Digital Cameras: Cameras: Do not purchase a camera with pixel dimensions lower than 1024 x 768. Pixel dimensions can tell you how large an image the camera is capable of producing. For yearbook production, images must be at least 300 dpi (dots per inch). Divide your pixel dimensions by 300, and you can tell how large the image from a camera will be at 100%. This is critical information, since you should never enlarge digital camera photos. Using this formula, a 1024 x 768 camera will give images that are roughly 4 x 3 inches. Smaller pixel dimensions from less expensive cameras produce even smaller images! Always shoot photos using the camera's highest setting. Possible Camera: Olympus America Support: ZD Net Article: Buying A Digital Camera Tuesday, August 21, 2001
Yearbook course Description: Yearbook Writing Grade Level: 9,10,11,12 Credits: 2 per year Prerequisite: 3.0 English GPA; Consent of Instructor; Students must fill out a staff application and have two teacher recommendations; Applicants will be interviewed by the instructor before admission to the class. Enrollment Limit: 15. This course applies journalistic writing toward the school yearbook, The Excalibur. There is an emphasis on copywriting and caption writing. Students may also be involved in photography and layout/design for yearbook on the Macintosh computer (PageMaker 6.5). Staff needs responsible, hard-working individuals. Time outside of class will be required by editors and possibly other staff members as well, especially photographers. This class will work in cooperation with the Yearbook Design class to produce the school yearbook. Another class site |