The 2016 Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Stockholm, Sweden on Saturday, 14th May.
Meanwhile, the 2016 Schoolovision Contest will come to its conclusion on Friday, 13th May 2016, the day before the real Eurovision.
Join us in this fun-filled project, as we find out who will be crowned 2016 Schoolovision Champions of Europe!
We are now, incredibly, into the 8th year of the Schoolovision adventure and would like to welcome all members, new and old, to this unique eTwinning project, which guarantees fun for all the participants, students and teachers alike, as we learn a bit about each others' cultures through the medium of music and song. with the added excitement of knowing that this is actually a competition.
Full rules are below; please read them carefully!
Following a similar format to the Eurovision Song Contest, Schoolovision 2016 will once again allow one primary school from all eTwinning countries wishing to participate, to record and upload a song of their choice, to be viewed by all other participants in the project.
In addition, all countries will be asked to evaluate and vote for their favourite songs after they have listened to all the others- and of course, voting for yourself will not be allowed!
You and your class will have until Friday, 6th May to decide upon your song, practise it, video it, and get it uploaded and embedded onto the project blog website, using either YouTube or Vimeo. Once all songs are uploaded, you will need to get your class to watch all the other countries' entries and decide who will receive your votes. This should be done in the week from Friday 6th May until Thursday, 12th May.
On Friday, 13th May 2016, you have two choices. You can either join the team for a group webcam conference, starting at 10.00 am CET time, where we will announce our votes to each other and total the votes up, so we can establish the winner. Or, if this is not possible, you will be able to watch a recording of the webcam conference afterwards to see who the winners are, or simply view the website, as the results will be posted straight after the webcam conference finishes. In all cases, you will need to email your votes to Steffen, the project co-ordinator, by Thursday evening (12th May) and NO LATER than 1800 hrs CET. This way, we will be able to successfully total all the votes from all the countries and announce who are Schoolovision champions for 2016. The winning school will be sent a specially commissioned trophy!
RULES
1. There can be one entry from each country with an independent status. Usually, this will mean one participating school per country. As a special exception, joint entries of two schools from one country are acceptable.
2. Schoolovision is for primary schools only. In addition, the participants (active singers) must be a maximum of 12 years old during the present school year. Their turning 13 in between is acceptable.
3. All previous entrants will already have received a request, asking you to confirm that you wish to enter the 2016 contest. After your confimation you will receive an invitation (via eTwinning) to become an official partner in the project, followed later by a separate invitation to contribute to the project's blog. You need to sign up for the blog, whereby you will be able to upload your finished song in due course.
In addition, please send Steffen a brief description of your school, along with a photograph and the link to your school's website, so that each country can see who is all taking part this year.
4. The song you choose to sing should be one of your choice, hopefully chosen in collaboration with your pupils, and can be sung in any language. It can be a well-known song, or an original song that perhaps no-one else will have heard of- it's up to you! However, it MUST be connected to your country in some way. *** PLEASE BE AWARE THAT IF THE SONG HAS BEEN COPYRIGHTED, YOU MUST GET PERMISSION BEFORE USING IT.
5. Musical accompaniment is permitted- but only in the following way: Members of your class (your pupils) who wish to play musical instruments can do so, and your song can have adult help who could for example, play a piano or a keyboard to lead the tune of the song. Alternatively, you can use a CD for the tune (but without the original singer's voice) - but your children MUST do the singing!
6. All entries MUST be completed and uploaded by Friday, 6th May at the latest. When your song is ready, it is your task to upload the video of your song to the project website via www.blogger.com using either the “upload video” section of the site (which is, due to the poor video quality of this option, not very recommendable) or by uploading your video to YouTube or Vimeo, then copying and pasting the embed code into your blog post. All files MUST be uploaded by Friday 6th May, as each country will then need to watch all the entries and judge them during the following week- Monday 9th- Thursday 12th May.
7. Once you and your pupils have watched each entry and chosen your favourites, please email your choices to Steffen before 1800 hrs CET on THURSDAY, 12th MAY.
YOU MUST NOT VOTE FOR YOUR OWN ENTRY!
8. It is always a great experience to receive positive and encouranging comments. By participating in this project, you also agree to encourage your pupils to write such comments under the videos of their partners. Equally, you will reserve some time to write a number of comments yourselves. You might even encourage colleagues and parents to follow your example, thus making the great work of your pupils and yourselves more known and positively regarded, just as the whole Schoolovision project.
9. In the past all countries' entries were listed according to their results. However, since some partners were unhappy with the unequal chances (perhaps due to different availability of technical and muscial support in the various countries), a new rule will be installed. All partners can choose if they wish to be listed with the full result or if they just wish to be named including a link to their entry. The top 20 scores will be published automatically; all others may opt in to be listed with their actual results.
GOOD LUCK to all countries, and enjoy making your own and watching all the other entries, too!
May the best overall entry win the contest!
*** As said above, the whole point of Schoolovision is that you try to sing something that relates to your country. If you compose your own song- fantastic! Over the past years, we have had some really outstanding compositions by various Schoolovision teams.
If you choose to sing a song that has already been recorded previously, then it MUST be culturally relevant to your own country.
If you're unsure whether your song idea complies with this rule, please contact Steffen and Marek.
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