Grade School Yearbooks

[Antmeister]

I am interested to know when this started. Definitely didn't start with my generation. It's odd when my daughter already has yearbooks stretching back to kindergarten and they are better quality and size then the first one I received in Jr. High (7th-8th) grade.

And to top it all off, at my son's school they even get color photos for all grades. I didn't get a color photo until I was a senior in high school and they did those freaking studio glamour photos.

So when exactly did this start or does this just depend on the locale?

[Kodos]

This is what yearbooks looked like when I was in grade school.

[Antmeister]

Interesting. When I was in 4th grade, we just had a class photo. That is similar (being a one page thing), but it is not a yearbook.

[Kodos]

Yeah, I was just joking. We just got a single page with our teacher that year and our classmates.

[Antmeister]

I think we got one of that fancy one pagers in 6th grade. Prior to that, we sat on some bleachers in the cafeteria with the teacher with our fake grins for each year. Hmmm, which one is our resident alien?

[Young Drachma]

I'm willing to bet strongly that with the proliferation of social networks that render yearbooks useless, high school kids are buying them less and less. College yearbooks are basically mothballed at all but a few institutions and so, some intrepid salesman figured out that if you bring it down to the K-6 level that parents are more likely to buy them without protest and it opens a revenue stream that wasn't there before since well....their entire business model is about to be extinct.

[Sun Tzu]

Where's Kodos? Oh wait, there he is.

[JediKooter]

Originally Posted by Kodos

This is what yearbooks looked like when I was in grade school.

Now which one is Kodos. It's hard to tell without seeing all the arms.

And Sun Tzu answered my question.

[Antmeister]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

I'm willing to bet strongly that with the proliferation of social networks that render yearbooks useless, high school kids are buying them less and less. College yearbooks are basically mothballed at all but a few institutions and so, some intrepid salesman figured out that if you bring it down to the K-6 level that parents are more likely to buy them without protest and it opens a revenue stream that wasn't there before since well....their entire business model is about to be extinct.

We shall see. I am doubting that yearbooks will be obsolete on the high school level because I still think hard copies of images compiled in a yearbook still has some relevance. But I don't truly know that since I have no children at that age.

[Kodos]

We'll see who guesses correctly first.

[Tigercat]

I went to a non-HS Catholic school 1-8 and they had yearbooks going back to the 60s. Might have been more common in private schools though...

[Antmeister]

Bottom row, 3rd from the left?

[Sun Tzu]

I've had yearbooks at ever school I've ever been to dating back to 2nd grade. I lived in some pretty nice areas though.

[jeff061]

I'm going for top row 3rd from left.

Just took Kodos a couple more years than his peers.

[Dodgerchick]

Originally Posted by Antmeister

Bottom row, 3rd from the left?

How dare you, that's what I said

[Kodos]

Originally Posted by jeff061

I'm going for top row 3rd from left.

Just took Kodos a couple more years than his peers.

No, but I like the way you think.

[Kodos]

Originally Posted by Antmeister

Bottom row, 3rd from the left?

X

[Kodos]

And the winner is:

[Izulde]

I had yearbooks in elementary school, although they were cheap paper things. The yearbooks I had in middle school and high school were nice. Hardbound on quality paper and really durable.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Antmeister

We shall see. I am doubting that yearbooks will be obsolete on the high school level because I still think hard copies of images compiled in a yearbook still has some relevance. But I don't truly know that since I have no children at that age.

Networking websites rendering yearbooks obsolete - The Boston Globe

Kids don't want them. I'm sure they're great for parents though and that's what will keep them alive, but as far as student interest there's no real point. Kids take their own pictures, have their own Facebook pages and cover their own events so they have a tapestry of what happened from elementary school to middle school to high school and so on. And that's not just from my research, that's from actually working at a K-12 school this year.

This article is instructive, as you have the old people happy with how it's always been and the younger ones just going through the motions and implementing their new tactics to keep the old dinosaur medium relevant.

Their business model is only better than newspapers because it's highly subsidized by parents and school districts, but they won't last another generation unless the business model changes.

[Izulde]

My favorite part of yearbooks was getting signatures.

[Dodgerchick]

Originally Posted by Izulde

My favorite part of yearbooks was getting signatures.

Yup, mine too.

[Autumn]

Originally Posted by Izulde

My favorite part of yearbooks was getting signatures.

But now with social media I can see where this would be of less interest to kids. When I was in high school, a year book signature was the only time you ever wrote anything to another kid. Nowadays kids can IM, comment on Facebook, MySpace, etc. Writing in a yearbook would be a lot less unique than it was for us.