Video yearbooks, if still not exactly a commonplace on the education scene, are certainly not the high-tech innovation they once were. Even so, some schools this season are taking the video yearbook to a whole new level, preparing for that stroll down memory lane via montage slideshows and wireless delivery to student picture phones. It's video yearbook version 2.0, you might say.

As a supplement to their traditional print yearbooks, many students this spring are taking home slickly produced digital versions for their computers and DVD players. These second-generation high-tech supplements include slide shows set to music, video clips of school year highlights, and personal messages from fellow classmates.

"Imagine you click on a senior picture, and there is a video farewell behind it. Imagine you click on a picture of a football player, and he's running in for a touchdown," suggested Lisa Baird, president of YoDVD (Yearbook on DVD), a company with headquarters in Springfield, Mo.

"It's taking the yearbook and having it come alive," she said.

That's not to say the print yearbook is dead. Most schools opting for the digital alternative are using it in addition to print--a little something extra that reflects this generation's appetite for new technology.

"These kids just think this way. These kids think in terms of video. They think in terms of motion. They think digitally," said John Lund, president of Yearbook Interactive, a Salt Lake City company that has joined with Jostens, a giant in the high school memento industry that specializes in yearbooks, class rings, and other keepsakes. Together, they've offered yearbooks on CD-ROMs and DVDs for about five years.

Both companies report this has been their biggest-selling year. YoDVD, which has produced digital yearbooks in the Midwest since 2001, had 27 school accounts this year, Baird said. She's set to go national this fall and expects more than 50 schools to sign on. The companies see nothing but growth in the future.

"I believe, in the next two years, the vast majority of print yearbooks will have a digital supplement, either a CD-ROM or a DVD, snapped into their covers," Lund said.

Schools that have gone digital typically have their yearbook staff or audio/visual clubs produce the content. The students work with software developed by the vendors, scanning in photos and splicing in video to create as simple or as elaborate a digital yearbook as they choose. The schools ship their files off to the companies for final production and packaging.

For the more sophisticated video yearbooks, the offerings range from a point-and-click musical slide show to a movie-style feature with flashy photo montages and sharply edited video of signature events, such as the senior prom or the homecoming football game.

For many schools, the digital supplements give a home to the scores of unused images that don't make it into most print yearbooks. And they provide a keepsake of the most noteworthy events in the spring, when it's usually too late to squeak past the print yearbook's deadline.