Saturday, 21 January 2023

Rules

The 2023 Eurovision Song Contest final will take place on Saturday, 13 May.



Meanwhile, the 2023 edition of Schoolovision will come to its conclusion on Friday, 12 May, the day before the real Eurovision. Join us in this fun-filled project, as we find out who will be the latest Schoolovision Champions in the 15th edition of our grand project.

We welcome all members, new and old, to this unique eTwinning project, which guarantees fun for all participants, students and teachers alike, as we learn about each others' cultures through the medium of music and song with the added excitement of a friendly competition.

Full rules below; please read them carefully!


OVERVIEW

Following a similar format to the Eurovision Song Contest, Schoolovision 2023 will once again allow one primary school from each eTwinning (Plus) country and beyond 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, 05 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 Monday, 08 May until Thursday, 11 May.

On Friday, 12 May 2023 you have two choices: You can either join the team for a video conference, starting at 10.00 am CEST time, during which 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 video conference afterwards to see who the winners are, or simply visit the project website, as the results will be posted straight after the video conference finishes.
In any case, you will need to email your votes to Steffen, the project administrator, by Thursday evening (11 May) and NO LATER than 1800 hrs CEST. Thus we will be able to successfully total all the votes from all participating countries and announce who are Schoolovision champions for 2023. The winning school will be sent a specially commissioned trophy!


FULL RULES

1. There can only 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 several 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 to confirm that they wish to enter the 2023 contest. After confimation they will receive an invitation to become an official eTwinning partner in the project, followed later by a separate invitation to contribute to this project 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 photograph of your school and the link to its website, so that everyone can see which countries and schools are participating this time.

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 singers' voices) - your children MUST do the singing!

6. All entries MUST be completed and uploaded by Friday, 05 May midnight at the latest. When your song is ready, it is your task to post the video of your song to the project website via www.blogger.com using the embed code provided by either YouTube or Vimeo. All files must be uploaded by Friday, 05 May, as each country will then need to watch all the entries and judge them during the following week, Monday, 08 May till Thursday, 11 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, 11 MAY.
YOU MUST NOT VOTE FOR YOUR OWN ENTRY!

7.a As of 2018 we adopted (but leave optional for you to choose individually) the latest ESC rule according to which 50 % of the votes are given by an expert jury, in this case us teachers. As we are not technically able to copy the exact voting process of the ESC, we will install it in such a way that all partners may mix their national pupil votes with their own teacher votes before sending them in.

8. It is always a great experience to receive positive and encouranging comments. By participating in this project, you also agree to let your pupils write such comments under the videos of their partners. Equally, you will reserve some time to write a number of comments yourselves. You are welcome to 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 earlier years of this project 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 was installed in 2016. All partners can choose if they wish to be listed with their 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 partners! Enjoy making your own video and watching all the other entries, too!
May the best overall entry lead the scoreboard while we are all winners in this together!

*** 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.