Senior Neila Mustard goes to scan her yearbook photo to see if she can upload any photos to Yearbook Plus to test it out. If it works, she’ll be able to upload photos. The photos she uploads can be seen by other people on staff. Yearbook Plus is a success.

Yearbooks are made to preserve memories made during the school year. To help make the yearbooks more personal, East has a feature called Yearbook Plus, which is available for the 2024 yearbook.

“To view the photos, you would scan the QR code on the title page in the actual yearbook, that will take you to a site,” junior Addison Pithan said. “Every spread has a star with a B on it that if you scan that, on the site the photos from that event will show up. To upload photos, the yearbook staff puts posters throughout the school with a QR code that students can scan.”

The yearbook already has students on staff to help design the pages and take photos, but now the rest of the student body can upload photos as well with Yearbook Plus. The thing is that East almost did not have it. 

“For this yearbook, it was an offer we had from Jostens, our yearbook company, to have a way to document more coverage not in the book,” Mustard said. “It caught my attention due to the many different ways people will be able to archive the photos, and not only can I add more of my photos I [am] really proud of, it gives the school people an opportunity to put their part into the school even not physically in the book.”

Having Yearbook Plus makes the student a photographer. It shares students’ lives during the school year that would not have been seen without having this program for the yearbook.

“There are so many benefits of having Yearbook Plus, such as the fact people can have a way to show more of their school year,” Mustard said. “Some of the things that are uploaded are events that don’t get covered by the yearbook staff. I’m so excited to see the different types of events and people’s amazing school year through them.”

Another benefit of having Yearbook Plus is that it extends beyond the pages of the yearbook. Yearbooks are limited to a certain number of pages.

“There is minimal space to put photos on the spreads in the yearbook, so Yearbook Plus gives the photographers a chance to show more photos they have taken, other students not on yearbook staff can share the photos they have taken too,” Pithan said.

With all these photos being sent in from students, anything could be submitted as long as it is a photo. To help with anything inappropriate being submitted, or anything like that, it has to be monitored.

“When [photos] are uploaded we have a way to see them before they are fully uploaded to the actual site,” Mustard said. “This is just to make sure there are no inappropriate photos submitted. I also make a section for every page in the book so people can select specific content.”