CD to replace memory book

ROCK RAPIDS-Central Lyon Middle School students are taking pictures for a purpose.

While the school previously had memory books made for students to buy, a different idea was needed for the project to continue this year due to the greatly increased cost of the yearbook-like publications.

"It got way too expensive," said eighth-grader Jessica Roetman.

In addition, Central Lyon also experienced a shortfall of funds to enable the students to go on field trips.

So, Roetman, along with fellow eighth-grader Mikayla Miller, were approached by tech education teacher Sue Van Wyhe to put together a Central Lyon Middle School memory CD.

While any of the middle school students can take pictures for the CD, Miller is in charge of editing all of the photographs and Roetman is putting all of the pictures together in a Microsoft Office PowerPoint presentation for the CDs.

Once the CDs are finished, they will be sold for $5 each. In turn, all of the proceeds will go directly to the middle school's Pride Program, which enables students in good academic standing to take short field trips each quarter and a longer field trip at the end of the school year.

Although the middle school subsidizes most of the cost of the trip, it does not cover 100 percent, so the funds raised through the memory CD sales hopefully will provide the means for the Pride Program to continue.

While Roetman would like to have the CDs complete by the second week of May, she already has about 44 PowerPoint slides, with two to three pictures per slide, complete.

"That's not even half the pictures," she said.

While most of the pictures Roetman has encountered thus far have been of eighth-graders, she said there also are a variety of pictures from sixth- and seventh-graders.

For the middle school students to participate, Roetman said they need to check out a digital camera from Van Wyhe, and take pictures of Central Lyon student life, sporting events or other activities. The pictures then are sent to Miller, who edits each one on Picnik, a photo editing software Web site that allows her easy access to poweful photo editing tools.

One picture takes Miller about five minutes to completely edit, but she does not mind the added time.

"I've learned a lot of new techniques," she said. "I've done a lot of good things."

Although Miller and Roetman are not sure how much they would like to raise when CD sales begin in May, one thing is for certain - they are having fun along the way.

"I like looking at the pictures a lot," Roetman said. "It's really fun."

This article appeared in the April 4, 2009 edition of The N'West Iowa REVIEW.