The British Council’s educational social network site - English Online (http://www.englishonline.hk/en and http://m.englishonline.hk/en (mobile version)) has now almost 90,000 registered users! (88,460 registered usesr at the current time of writing on 28th December 2008).

Well done to Andy Newton and the English Online team at the British Council… at this rate of growth the site will have over 100,000 users in early 2009!

English Online was built using Drupal by Brightlemon. To find out how to use Drupal and social networking concepts to power your projects - contact Brightlemon today…

Latest Members
There are 88,460 users on British Council - English Online.

Learn English

Brightlemon has been commissioned to design a pilot website for British Council – Learn English.

The site will be divided into two main sections that will cater to their specific target audience. Learn English Adults (teens, adults, professionals, migrant workers and English exam takers) and Learn English (aimed primarily at children, parents and teachers of children). These two sites, in terms of design, offer two different proposition (see below)

The Learn English website will incorporate the existing sites (Learn English Central, Learn English Professionals and Learn English Kids) into a brand new, fresher and more user friendly design. At present these sites attract more than 900,000 visitors per month.

Learn English Adults

Design and layout

The design aims to highly navigable, modern, light use of graphics and not too much text

Ability to choose languages

Part of the requirement of the brief is that the website should be ‘multi language’. English, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Arabic and Russian versions.

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Help blocks

Profiles and accounts for the new site.

Events Calendar

Multiple navigation options – most popular, recently viewed or polled content.

Look at latest comments and blogs.

Learn English kids

Design and layout

Clear, simple, vibrant, child-friendly, youthful, strong use of colours, simple navigation, images, graphics for navigation, speech bubbles, not too much text.

Main graphic navigation carousel

Content Block styling

Learn English Flash Games

Latest competition module

Login modules

Opinion Polls

Recent comments

News of the first ‘Shine Week’ national schools festival has been featured in broadcasts on the UK’s main TV stations, on shows such as Breakfast on BBC1 and This Morning on ITV1.

The festival, showcasing the talents of the nation’s children and promoting the encouragement and nurturing of the talents of young people, relies very heavily on the social networking website www.shineweek.co.uk which was designed and built by Brightlemon. Participants in the festival (from over 2500 of the UK’s schools’) have been using the site to upload and share video, audio, images and written content spotlighting the talents of themselves, classmates and friends. Users can comment on each other’s work and stories and post news of events held by their schools under the banner of Shine Week.

Former Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq appeared on BBC1’s Breakfast program to promote the festival.

You can see her interview using the BBCs iPlayer:

or via the Shineweek.co.uk streaming videos below:

BBC Breakfast:

BBC Breakfast Konnie Huq interview:

BBC Breakfast with Hardeep Singh Koli:

The shineweek social networking web site was built by Brightlemon using the Drupal Content Management platform.

The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has declared his full support for the first ‘Shine Week’ national schools festival and the festival’s social networking web site, which was designed and built by Brightlemon.

The PM Gordon Brown and Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families Ed Balls visited Thomas Tallis School in Greenwich, London, to see students showcase their talents on day two of Shine week.

The archived site from 2008 is available here at http://www.shinearchive.co.uk.

Shine 2009 is coming soon…

The Prime Minister’s press office have posted a video on their own ‘Downing St’ Youtube channel documenting the visit.

Downing Street YouTube Channel:

Creative Partnerships YouTube Channel:

http://www.shineweek.co.uk/

Brightlemon were chosen by the Department for Children Schools and Families (Dcsf), the Arts Council and Creative Partnerships to build a social networking web site built along the lines of YouTube allowing children, teachers and creative organisations across England to upload content showcasing their talents. Users will be able to register and (subsequent to a verification process) upload video, photos, audio and written content and details of Shineweek related events. This content managed web site features:

• uploadable video, audio, images and written content
• mapping of registered users (using Google maps)
• verification system (via fax, email and phone)
• personal schools pages
• customised content for each user
• custom blogs
• tagging, voting and rating of content
• customisable galleries

and many web 2.0 features.

Watch this space because Stage 2 will be launching soon…!

http://www.mandarama.com/

About the Mandarama web site

The Mandarama web site is an online Chinese learning, subscription-based web site aimed at new learners of Mandarin. Specifically targetting primary and secondary school students in the UK, USA and overseas schools the site features:

• Multiple integrated Flash games
• Chinese Wiki with audio, images
• full online postcard (e-card) system with audio messages and chinese text
• full content management system
• e-commerce subscription system integrated with Protx
• multiple account levels with set number of allowed logins

About Mandarama (from the Mandarama web site)

The company behind Mandarama is Bamboo Learning Limited (www.bamboolearning.com) - We only teach Mandarin Chinese and only to children - We are a team of experienced Mandarin Chinese educators, Western Digital content creators and professional managers.

Why Mandarama?

We are passionate specialists in providing opportunities for children to learn Mandarin Chinese - We are innovative – combining the best in learning Chinese with the best in Western style animation and thought leadership on ICT in education - We represent great value in comparison with one-off DVDs, books with no sound, non-dynamic content.

Technologies used:
XHTML, CSS, Drupal, PHP, MySQL, Javascript

http://www.englishforlifeandwork.co.uk/

About this project

Brightlemon were chosen to work with Tribal Group to develop the front end design for this English Learning portal.

The site features mutiple languages - English, Polish, Urdu and Mandarin to cater for a diverse target audience.

About English for Life and Work

“Improve your English with online courses that will help you in your life and work in the UK”

The English for Life and Work web site is run by Tribal and CTAD and provides online courses in English specifically to native speakers of Polish, Urdu and Chinese.

Brightlemon worked on the design of the application built by Tribal.

Technologies used:
XHTML, CSS.

http://www.shineweek.co.uk/

About the Shineweek web site

Site Summary

The Shineweek web site is a social networking site built along the lines of YouTube allowing children, teachers and creative organisations to upload content showcasing their talents. Users will be able to register and subsequent to verification upload video, photos, audio and written content and details of Shineweek related events.

Verification

The web site has a detailed verification system - each user associates himself/herself with a school from the Dcsf database
which is integrated into the web site. Once a user is registered they can request verification via phone, fax or email.

Tagging, voting and rating

The web site will also allow users to vote for, rate and tag content. As well as tagging of content using pre-defined fields, free tagging will be enabled to allow users to suggest and add new tags. This will enable users to generate ideas for what “talent” really is.

About Shine and Shineweek

Shine is a UK government initiative (organised by the Department for Children, Schools and Families formerly the Department for Education) aimed at showcasing the talent of all children in schools nationwide. It is jointly organised by Creative Partnerships, the Arts Council, the Talent and Enterprise Taskforce and the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

From the Shine web site

We, the new youth culture trust with the DCSF, are inviting schools up and down the country to join this festival. We know there are many exciting end of year events already planned in schools. SHINE offers an opportunity to bring them together in the festival week and join a national campaign to celebrate the talent in everyone.

SHINE will create a real buzz with a strong media presence, the endorsement and support of the Prime Minister and other senior government ministers and well-known faces in the arts and the creative industries.

Technologies used:
XHTML, CSS, Drupal, PHP, MySQL, Javascript