Schoolovision 2012- The Rules...

The 2012 Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Baku, Azerbaijan on Saturday May 26th.

Meanwhile, the 2012 Schoolovision Contest will come to its conclusion on Friday 25th May 2012, the day before the real Eurovision.
Join us in this fun-filled project, as we find out who will be crowned 2012 Schoolovision Champions of Europe...
I am very excited about this latest edition of Schoolovision, now into its 4th year, and Steffen and I would like to ask everyone involved to try to ensure that it will be the BIGGEST and BEST Schoolovision so far!
Full rules are below; please read them carefully!

Following a similar format to the Eurovision Song Contest, Schoolovision 2012 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 18th 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 18th May until Thursday 24th May.

On Friday 25th May 2012, you have two choices. You can either join the team for a group webcam conference, starting at 9.00am UK 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 Michael Purves, the project co-ordinator, by Thursday evening (24^th May) at NO LATER than 1700hrs UK TIME. This way, we will be able to successfully total all the votes from all the countries and announce who are Schoolovision champions for 2012. The winning school will be sent a specially commissioned trophy!

RULES

1. Only one school from each country will be allowed to enter.

2. Schoolovision is for primary schools only.

3. All previous entrants will receive a request from partner Steffen Toppler, asking you to confirm that you wish to enter the 2012 contest.  The co-ordinator, Michael Purves will then send you an invitation (via eTwinning) to become a 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 Michael a brief description of your school, along with a photograph, that Michael will add to the blog, so that each country can see who is all taking part.

4. By the end of March 2012, you MUST email the title of the song you are proposing to sing with your class to Michael.  The reasons for this are listed below.

5. 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. IF YOU NEED TO GET PERMISSION THEN YOU MUST EMAIL A COPY OF THIS PERMISSION (in ENGLISH) TO MICHAEL BEFORE USING IT. Failure to do so by MARCH 31^st will result in your school being disqualified from the 2012 contest.

6. 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!

7. All entries should be completed and uploaded by Friday 18th May. When your song is ready, you upload the video of your song to the blog, via www.blogger.com using either the “upload video” section of the site, 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 18th May, as each country will then need to watch all the entries and judge them during the following week- Monday 20th- Thursday 24th May.

8. Once you and your pupils have watched each entry and chosen your favourites, please email your choices to Michael Purves, before 1700hrs UK TIME on THURSDAY 24^th MAY , YOU MUST NOT VOTE FOR YOUR OWN ENTRY!

GOOD LUCK to all countries, and enjoy making your entry, and listening to all the other entries!

May the best overall entry win the contest!

*** As I 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! We have had some really outstanding compositions from, eg Finland in both 2010 and 2011 that have been written and produced by the Schoolovision team there. If you choose to sing a song that has already been recorded previously, then it MUST be relevant to your own country. In 2010, we had entries from both Spain and Iceland who sang songs by Abba. This will not be allowed in 2012, as Abba have no connection to Spain or Iceland. If you need guidance, please email Michael to ensure that what you want to do is within the rules.