In an age of rapid technological advancements, why should our yearbooks lag behind? This year, SAGA is riding the wave of the future; the Niles North 2014-2015 yearbook will integrate video within its usual content. By downloading the free Aurasma app and following Niles North SAGA, students can now access the video content when they activate the viewfinder and hold their phone over most of the “dominant” or largest images on each page. Bouncing dots will get closer and closer together as the app works to recognize the trigger image until a video begins playing.
Aurasma has the potential to completely revolutionize the experience of reliving high school memories through a yearbook’s content. “The yearbook is a time capsule; a tangible artifact of the year. What better way to fully encapsulate the year than to add the sights and sounds of it as well. Basically, augmented reality adds another dimension to the coverage we can provide,” says Renee Scott, SAGA sponsor and English teacher. At this rate, soon yearbooks will include holograms as well!
Not only does Aurasma allow students to view videos added by SAGA before they pick up their yearbooks, but it also allows them to view content SAGA adds after the yearbooks are all distributed. This feature aids SAGA’s ability to give students a spectacular product in multiple ways. Any issues that arise with a video can be addressed because videos can be changed by SAGA at any time it becomes necessary to alter them. The final deadline for SAGA to complete the yearbook is the first week of March, but a lot of events occur after then that are still crucial to fully recount the year and our memories as a community. Since Aurasma allows SAGA to add video content even after distribution, SAGA can now include content from spring 2015 instead of allowing the yearbook’s spring section to be restricted to only include content from spring 2014 for the sake of deadlines. For example, the featured image of this article depicts the girls softball team, and although softball is a spring sport, content from their games can be uploaded and accessed by including this image as the trigger image. The ability to update the video content past SAGA’s distribution day also grants future yearbooks the unique feature to become a dynamic product as well as an artifact of the past.
This year’s yearbook is history in the making, but do not be upset if not every large picture unlocks video. Unfortunately, this new technology was only discovered by the SAGA staff halfway through the year, and while SAGA is still gathering video that will be added to the yearbook over time, some events may not have been recorded and will not make it into this year’s yearbook. However, the foundation laid by SAGA’s experimentation this year will only help make next year’s yearbook that much better. Now SAGA will know in advance how to utilize Aurasma as well as to carefully choose video to complement more segments of the yearbook than will be able to be addressed this year.
