In a little more than a month, the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) will name the 2011 Gold and Silver Crown Award winners at their annual spring convention in New York City on March 16.

This year, more than 60 high school and middle school yearbooks were named Crown Award Finalists and CSPA invited all the staffs to submit two spreads of their best work to show off in a new publication called In Their Voices.

Three issues of In Their Voices can be found here at the website for CSPA’s online magazine, Student Press Review.

Each staff provided their own commentary on the spreads they submitted.

Check out this video that was posted on the Walsworth Facebook page from the yearbook staff at Ilwaco High School in Ilwacho, Wash.

Is there random hilarity going on here? Yes, there is. But there is also plenty of useful yearbook sales information packed into the 2+ minutes.

It looks like just about everybody on the Ilwaco staff got involved too. Beware of the creative Rickroll at the end!

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s the middle of winter and your students are working hard, but they may be slowing down a bit. Days of limited daylight and less time outdoors may be taking its toll. So, get your staff moving to keep the doldrums and stress at bay.

Brain teasers and small bursts of exercise will help them clear their brain and keep them inspired as they continue to work on their yearbook.

Everyone needs to take a break from behind a desk or computer. Maybe you can even invent your own stress reliever as a staff tradition. Here are some ideas to get you going.

• Stand and sing TV show theme songs for a few minutes. The theme to Spongebob Squarepants is always fun.
• Try some improvisation. Have your staff create a story, with each person adding one word at a time. You might need to stand in a circle.
• Twenty jumping jacks are always good for a break.
• Wham-O produced its first Frisbees on Jan. 13, 1957. Take your staff outside or to the cafeteria or gym to stretch and throw a few.
• TV Game Show Day is Jan. 24, the birthdate of Mark Goodman, the producer of many such shows. Play a TV game show game, such as Jeopardy!, using journalism/yearbook questions.
• Play the game Twister.
• Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day, Jan. 30. If you have some, let your staff pop it.
• As long as staff members are not sick, and the temperature is not frigid, put on coats and go walk around the building once. This will boost morale on a sunny day.

It’s been awhile since the Yearbooks Blog took a look back at an old celebrity yearbook photo, but we found one today on the website popcrush.com that we just had to share.

Any ideas who that Canadian singer is, based on her yearbook photo?

She’s gone to quite a different look since the high school days. Then again, that’s probably true of just about all of us.

The latest yearbook video to get showcased here in the Yearbooks Blog comes from Rim of the World High School in Lake Arrowhead, Calif.

The video is a take-off of the funny series of commercials done over the last couple years for the Discover card, in which celebrities have trouble communicating over the phone about a charge mix-up. Putting a yearbook spin on a popular series of ads is one fun direction to go with your yearbook video.

Another positive of the video from Rim is that the staff used it to drive awareness of their yearbook page on Facebook. Take a look below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

James Ducat, the yearbook adviser at Walsworth customer school Beaumont High School in Beaumont, Calif., was recently honored as one of 10 regional finalists by the California League of High Schools in its 2011 High School Educator of the Year contest.

After being selected for the honor, Ducat was featured in a nice article by the local newspaper, The Press-Enterprise.

As Ducat explained in the article, he wants his students “to be able to express themselves clearly, whatever they are writing” and “be able to critically consider what they are experiencing in the world.”

There’s only a few hours left in 2011, and there all kinds of year in review lists all over the internet wrapping up the last 12 months.

Your staff will probably want to include some current events coverage from the second half of 2011 in the yearbook. The top national and world news, entertainment and sports highlights are a great way to look back on the year.

Some of the better online resources to check out include CNN’s year in review section, which lets readers vote on what they thought the top stories were, Time magazine’s Top 10 of Everything lists for 2011 and Yahoo’s informative 2011 Year in Review blog.

Those are just a few sites to look at. There are dozens more. Plus, several magazines put out special year in review issues.

Enjoy looking back at 2011. And Happy New Year!

Take a look at this very informative article from The News-Herald, an Ohio newspaper, about the current state of student journalism in public high schools.

The article quotes a new study from Kent State University, which concludes that while journalism has changed with the growth of the internet, the number of students interested in learning about it hasn’t really changed much at all.

That’s reflected in the number of students that continue to participate in student publications in high school. Yearbooks, specifically, continue to be produced all over the country. According to the study, 94% of public high schools have a yearbook, which roughly means 17,000 yearbooks get produced in a year in the U.S.

“It’s key to journalism education because it combines the journalism aspect with principles of design demonstrating how the two factors together create a product for the consumer,” Alison Fisher, yearbook adviser at Chadron High School said in The News-Herald article.

Today is the 220th anniversary of the First Amendment taking effect in the United States, guaranteeing such rights as freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Non-partisan organization 1 for All wanted to celebrate that, which is why today they are holding the “Free to Tweet” scholarship contest, and offering students between the ages of 14 and 22 a chance at 22 $5,000 scholarships.

We first gave you the particulars on this contest last week over in the News & Notes area of the website, and now today is the big day! Nobody should be more qualified to win these scholarships than yearbook students, so we hope you take your best shot by tweeting and emailing in an entry. Good luck!

Amid the rush of deadlines and the holidays, did someone forget to plan a staff activity to pause and mark the occasion? Maybe this is the year for some spontaneity.

Here are some ideas for both fun and meaningful activities that can still be done before the winter break.

• Today, ask staff members to bring in treats on the last day of school before the winter break. Goodies do not have to be homemade – Hostess or Little Debbie holiday snack cakes or cookies from the grocery store bakery are fine. If you have a microwave in your room, increase the sugar experience with instant hot cocoa.
• Go one evening between now and Dec. 23 and collect canned goods to donate to a local food pantry.
  • Have staffers pass out candy canes in the halls with information on how to purchase a yearbook.
• Poinsettia Day is Dec. 12. One day this week, find or take images of poinsettias and practice altering them in Photoshop or InDesign for a design contest. Print and hang as winter decorations into February.
• Play a game during your treat time while honoring Bill of Rights Day on Dec. 15. Create a matching game to have staff match the number of the amendment to the rights it guarantees.
• Eat dinner at an Asian restaurant before Christmas, in honor of the movie A Christmas Story.
• Consider this serious activity to do while eating treats, meant to remind students how important they are to others: Have everyone write down three people whose lives would not be as good if they weren’t on the staff, in honor of the movie It’s a Wonderful Life.