I have read about all the great ideas for pictures taken at school, and we use many of them but the one I am most proud of is the WALL OF VOLUNTEERS, anyone who is is volunteering at an event is subject to a picture being taken and placed on the wall, at the end of the school year the wall is full of teachers,parents,children,grandparents,aunts and uncles. The children walk by the wall after recess and love to see a family member or a famililar face halfway thru the day.
Our school purchased a digital camera/camcorder and there is always someone using it at either an all school event or a classroom event.
I did the school newsletter and took pictures myself to include inthe newsletter.
Our principal loved this .....however, we also have a PTO website and she asked me not to post any of the pictures there because the students would have to sign a release yadda yadda yadda. . .also in our newsletter, we rarely put names to the pictures . ..there were usually many children in the pics so it really was't a "space" option to do that anyway LOL . . .
Anyway, I share all my pics with the secretary who puts the yearbook together and there is a wide variety in the yearbook each year.
Our school requires a release form; we constantly take photos as these make up our yearbook. Next year we have a Publicity Coordinator who will make arrangements for local papers to take pictures and write up articles when we have a "major" event at the school.
We keep 2 digital cameras in the school. One is for the teachers. If a class is doing something special, the teacher will use the camera to take pictures. The other camera is for our publicity chair. She takes pictures at all family events and at all assemblies.
We have a huge wall in the school that we plaster the pictures all over.It's a lot of fun to walk into the school and see all these great pictures.
We also use the pictures for the yearbook and for our school calendar. Every page on the calendar has four pictures(2 are full class pictures and the other 2 are action shots)This way every child in the school is on the calendar.
Our publicity chair also gets a lot of our pictures in the local paper. The kids just love seeing themselves in the paper.
We don't have a newsletter chair that really knows what she's doing, so for the time being we're just happy to get a newsletter, never mind putting pictures in it.
I do know that photos can be great marketing tools. A "come attend our family event" message is ten times more effective if it's accompanied by pictures of school families having a great time at a different family event.
I can also see some great uses for photos in rewarding/encouraging volunteering. What a nice surprise if a new volunteer gets a picture of her or him or the family at a school event --sent home with a quick note as a thank you.
We've seen some great pictures, too, in our Parent Group of the Year applications. The groups with lots of pictures seem to have an easier time building community.
But I'm far from expert here, thus the query... keep the good info coming...
Thanks Shawn for the information, it does help alot, but I'm still concerned about taking pictures of children for one reason or another that their parent/caregiver doesn't want it published.
I know that the parent/caregiver should very strongly inform the principal about certain issues such as this, but what if one slips through the cracks, so to speak. How does the law protect us?
