The results of the project were truly impressive. All 30 participating countries, listed below, successfully created and uploaded both test videos and final songs to the blog. All took part in the voting process, involving more than 600 children right across Europe, and 23 of the countries successfully logged in to the live vote FlashMeeting on Friday 15th May. The other 7 participants sent their votes by email the night before, but then watched the recording of the FlashMeeting after the event.

The winning school, in Brno, in the Czech Republic were visited on Friday 5th June by the project co-ordinator, Michael Purves, who flew from Scotland to present the children in the winning class their trophy and to congratulate them on their fantastic achievement.

More than this, the teachers in all 30 countries reported how positively the children had engaged in the project right from the start until the end, and how much they learned about Europe via the FlashMeetings and the videos watched from all the other countries. The fact that TV companies in 7 countries covered the project meant that it had media exposure across many countries.

In the winning class in Brno on June 5th, with the children, the class teachers, the headteacher, the Deputy Minister of Education for the Czech Republic, the Mayor of Brno and the project co-ordinator.

Schoolovision 2009 allowed teachers and pupils' ICT skills to be developed in a variety of ways. Many of the partners had never been involved in blogging, uploading digital images and videos to the internet, and none had previously used web-conferencing as a teaching tool.

Children were encouraged throughout to choose their own songs, be creative in their interpretations of songs and dances, to form their own questions that they wished to find answers to from their peers and teachers.

As well as being a huge adventure from start to finish, it was immensely enjoyable for all- which allowed it to be a very powerful way of learning, as the children saw what they were doing as fun, rather than direct learning- but afterwards were very positive about how much they had actually learned!

Children in the German class celebrate after being awarded the maximum 12 points during the live vote on Friday 15th May!

All classes were involved in the making of all videos, from January through to May 2009. The project blog hit counter shows a total of around 30,000 hits since January 2009.

http://schoolovision2009.blogspot.com

The project allowed children from all across Europe to meet each other and learn from each other about each individual country. This was done through the use of the test videos and through the use of the test FlashMeetings, all of which were recorded and are viewable directly from the blog itself. In particular, it allowed children to learn lots of facts about other countries from themselves, through direct interaction with their peers, which allowed them to get away from the teacher-pupil relationship a little.

As the project went on, and as TV companies and other media got involved in the vast majority of the countries, the pupils themselves sensed that what they were involved in was a very big project, and this increased their determination to make it a big success. For many, who had never had journalists or TV presenters asking them how they were enjoying the experience of meeting so many countries and learning so much about Europe, it was really a wonderful experience that they have said they will remember for all time.

For the teachers involved, they all stated how much they had enjoyed learning new skills, particularly the use of blogging, making videos and use of webconferencing.

For the children, the use of music and ICT proved highly motivating, especially to those in classes who might have struggled with more academic type work, and were in this instance able to develop their creativity and enthusiasm through the project.

For the schools themselves, there was much recognition for the work they all did. eTwinning in many countries has recognised the excellence of the project, and of course, media articles and Tv news allowed many schools to showcase what they did to the surrounding regions and countries.

Children in all the participating countries saw that ICT is more than just using computers or the internet. They used digital camcorders, projectors, microphones, webcams in ways that had never been done before in their schools, in order to produce highly impressive results.

Culturally, the children found out many things about each other as they went along. One question asked by the children in Scotland to several countries during test FlashMeetings, was "What do you call your own country in your own language?" and they received some unexpected replies! For example, none knew that the Greek word for Greece is Hellas!

Perhaps the best way to measure the success of the project is to include quotes from the 30 participating teachers:

Thanks from Italy!

Few words to say how fantastic was this project and how it was brilliant for teachers and students.

My children liked very much to stay all together with so many friends all around europe!

The project in every step had a superb organization.

Michael always thought about every aspects and every possible problem could happen.

The flashmeetings were an occasion to meet new friends, to test our abilities and to open our minds to strangers.

It's not so simple, nowadays, to have contacts with different people with a common project.

We, all the teachers, worked together in peace and I think it's a very important message to send to our politicians.

They must learn from children who, in their simple way,stay together and work together.

I will put this experience in my memory and in my students' memory!

Schoolovision- thanks from Sweden!

We have really enjoyed it, me and my pupils,  We realised how huge this project have been, during the weeks when one entry after one other, appeared on the blog.

I asked my pupils what they have learnt from this project:

Here are som answers:

" A lot about the nature in different countries"

"About climate in Europe"

" Habits"

"Songs"

"Culture"

"Difference between how kids from different countries look - haircolour, skin, clothes"

"School uniforms or not"

" How different languages sound"

"That we must have better equipment to succeed in the competion"

I hope that we can meet next year again! 

 Schoolovision 2009 in Estonia:

 We are very happy that we won the second place. Congratulation to Czech Republic, it was our favourite song too.

We all enjoyed this project very much. It was very well organized. Thank you! So many good emotions and fun. We learned a lot about Europe and how to work together.

Schoolovision in France:

This project was fantastic! My pupils learned so much about Europe (geography, culture, language...) and had a lot of fun learning a song in English. The Flashmeetings trained their skills to understand English and to express themselves. This is worth much more than any English lesson.

ICT skills were also trained, some children even don't have a computer at home; now they know how to manage Internet.

The voting on May, 15th was an unforgettable moment for the kids: they will always remember this day and numbers from 1 to 12!

Thanks from Iceland:

When Michael invited me to take part in Schoolovision I thought it would be a brilliant idea for the 7th class to be involved because they have a project about Europe on their curriculum. But later we decided to let the whole school take part in the project. We established something called Flatovision and told the children that everyone was to think about what he/she could do to show something he/she was best in (dancing and singing). Every child in the school was involved and everyone sure knows what Flatovision/Schoolovision is now. We are going to have Flatovision next year. Our students are also very proud of being representatives for Iceland. Using the internet as a tool to get information in this way is a very positive approach or a method to use for learning. The studens who took part in FlashMeeting had great fun doing it. They loved to see the other children in their classrooms. The voting 15th of May was the climax, the whole school came to the hall for a short time to watch.

Schoolovision is a perfect project to stimulate the children to find out different things about the European countries (geography/language/culture). The project was met with great enthusiasm both by the teachers and pupils and roused general interest in the project itself and the other participating countries.

Thanks Michael for leading us all this way through the work in the project and you taught us many practical things on the way.

Thanks a lot from Norway:

This project have been very fun, interesting and impressive, both for the teachers and pupils involved!