Shineweek 2009

Top 3 facts

The website doubled its success from 2008 with 25% of all schools signing up over both years
Shine 2009 saw 480 videos, 3996 images and 270 audio files uploaded to the site
5451 organisations, students and teachers signed up to Shine 2009

A community of Teachers, Students and Organisations which signed up over 25% of schools in the UK!

Following the success of Shine 2008, Brightlemon were asked to continue the good work for the following year. With a bigger project planned second time around - could we build a web platform to support the target of more than double the number of schools from year one? (25% of all schools in the UK) Of course!

The social network for Shine 2009 was redesigned for the older and larger audience - this time the remit was not just to get school children involved but all young people up to the age of 18.

Building on the user generated content (UGC) success of 2008, the 2009 network incorporated competitions so that users could submit their work to win some great prizes! Tim Henman taught the winners of the HSBC "Art of Champions" competition how to play tennis, winning artwork in the Tesco competition featured on an eco-friendly shopping bag (judged by Cath Kidson) and EA Games held a competition to help design a level of one of their computer games.

Shine 2009 also featured enhanced registration and validation, and other social web enhancements.

Special thanks to: Carol A., Carol D., Phil, Laura, Wyl, Rose and the team at Creative, Culture and Education; Lucy and Lucy from the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Talent and Enterprise Taskforce; Lydia, Georgie, Emily and the amazing team at RED consultancy/RED PR; and to all the organisations - the Arts Council, the BBC, Channel 4, Radiowaves and many others - and to all the schools and pupils who made Shine 2009 a success!

Weblink: http://shineweek.brightlemon.com

Key features include:

Personalized Profiles

Each user is able to keep track of their content and online status through customised profiles which include all the users’ content and general information.

On each profile you can view the users’ films, pictures, sounds (audio files), word (written documents) and blogs.

Media Galleries (photo, film, written)

The site supports a comprehensive range of multimedia, enabling users to upload films, images, audio and written work to the website.

Each image, film or document the user uploads is featured on both their profile and galleries.

The Shine 2009 site has a total of 3700 images, 270 sounds files and 490 written documents which can be commented on and rated by all registered users.

Rate and Comment

Registered users are able to add comments to most user generated content, indented comments indicate a stream of conversation.

The most talked about block on the homepage indicates which content has had most comments.

Users are also able to rate content. Similar to thumbs up functionality on Facebook, users are able to like all user generated content.

The most rated block on the homepage indicates which content is most popular.

Competitions

In order to drive registration and encourage as much participation and content generation, the site ran a number of competitions in partnership with commercial organisations such as HSBC and Tesco. Students were able to enter their work and win prizes.

For example, there was a competition for all members of the site to submit designs for a Tesco Eco bag. The winner of the competition then had their bag made and put in Tesco stores throughout the country.

Dynamic School Database

The Shine Week website was based around a straightforward two-step secure customised registration and moderation system. This featured a validation process integrated with EduBase, a database of educational establishments provided by the then Department for Children, Schools and Families (now the Department for Education) enabling staff to vet all teacher registrations.

Each user (including the teacher) is checked against this imported dynamic schools database. Allowing for a safe registration.

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“The site was the ever-present tool that formed the backbone of the event and played a vital role in our reaching targets of 10% of the nation's school population, with over 2,500 schools and organisations registering and over 1 million students and teachers.”

- Carol Alevroyianni, Director of Shine National Schools Festival 2008, Shine 2009 Director of Communications

Featured press from the Shineweek 2009 social network

Shine 2009 had a number of featured competitions with rewarding prises, including a training session with Tim Henman, Dance rehearsal with Mrs Dynamite and an opportunity to build your own level with EA Games.

Tim Henman Coaches Shine Competition Winners

As part of Shine (6th – 10th July), a week-long celebration of all talents in all children and young people, Mellow Lane School in Hayes, Middlesex won the ultimate prize of a coaching session from British tennis ace and HSBC Road to Wimbledon ambassador, Tim Henman. The winning prize was served up to the school following a national Shine competition, launched in partnership with HSBC, Official Banking Partner of The Wimbledon Championships.

EA Games Competition

As part of Shine (6th – 10th July), a week-long celebration of all talents in all children and young people EA Games bring Master Shortie and children from Berger School in Hackney together to build their own levels on new game Boom Blox Bash Party. The event hoped to raise awareness of the different talents required to follow a career in to the video gaming industry – which could be anything from art and design, to physics and storytelling.

Featured videos on the House of Lord debate

As a part of Shine Week 2009 the House of Lords hosted a debate by and for young people about the issues that affect them. This was the third youth event in the House of Lords Chamber and featured widely throughout the media.