Making Personalized Photo Books for Students

I am an elementary teacher and I enjoy making individual photo albums for my students.  I’ve been making them for over fifteen years, capturing my students memorable experiences to share with their families and reminisce over as years go by.  

photo album

I started out making hand assembled booklets with pretty (and expensive) paper, gluing in the pictures, and hand writing the captions.  Then Creative Memories and Bare Books came along and I was really hooked.  For the next few years, I naively spent about $5000.00 and countless hours during the year making my books.  When I handed over my creations to the parents, I hounded them to be careful, making sure that they understood the expense and effort that had been put into each album.

Then, my own beautiful children came into the world.  I discovered that working on my class scrapbooks at home was no longer an option.  That is, unless I didn’t mind my children “helping”.  That meant more hours spent after school, enlisting help from others and scrambling to use every spare minute during the day.  Even so, I wasn’t willing to give it up.

This year I thought I would try something new.  I discovered that a major retail store offers an option to make photo books on-line at a very reasonable price.  I was able to upload my photos to their website, choose a layout, crop, edit, add professional looking captions, and choose from a variety of backgrounds.  My books took a fraction of the time to create and I spent only $250.00.  They look terrific, too, and if a book is damaged or lost, I can reorder a new one because it is saved to my account.  Shipping was fast, free and I was able to pick them up at my local store.  After seeing the finished product, other teachers have decided to utilize an on-line photo book program.  I’ve even influenced a few converts through my blog!

Now, I am planning for the next school year.  I recently discovered that Kodak has an interesting photo book creator on their website.  It is slightly higher in price, but the quality should be better considering it is Kodak.  What I really need now, however, is a photo book program that caters to education that is affordable to teachers.  Teachers need attractive school themed backgrounds and clip art that match subject areas as well as holidays.  There is a lot of business out there for the company that caters to education, and lots of busy teachers who would be grateful to find that company!

Article edited by Nancy Jo Flynn

Contributed by Cash for Creations – Educational Visual Aids 

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