London, 9^th July 2010: The British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) announced the winners of the Schools Digital Challenge 2010 at an awards ceremony at Channel 4 studios on Thursday 8^th July.  The three winning schools, Baxter College, Kidderminster, Djanogly City Academy, Nottingham and Homewood School & Sixth Form Centre, Tenterden, Kent, were selected from the thousands engaged with across the country.

The BIMA Schools Digital Challenge is an annual competition for students aged 11-18, held in partnership with key industry organisations, and is part of BIMA’s drive to inspire young people to get involved in the digital industry.  The industry partners include Channel 4, Microsoft, Sky Creative, New Media Age, Econsultancy, SSAT, Speakeasy, Propel Recruitment and Contagious.

This year, schools across the UK were asked to devise a digital solution that provided real practical benefits for their community. The winning entries were judged against five key criteria of creativity, effectiveness, interactivity, teamwork and documentation.

Mirage Islam, Chair of Education and Innovation Group at BIMA says: “This challenge has provided us with an innovative way to bridge the gap between schools and the digital media industry. As young people are growing up in an increasingly digital world, we want them to experience the digital industry at an earlier stage. This competition enables us to lead the way in engaging future talent – encouraging and nurturing the next generation of web designers, developers, new media strategists and social media gurus.”

He added: “We were delighted with the standard of all of the entries but our winning teams managed to create community-spirited, imaginative and enterprising digital solutions.”

The 3 winning entries were:

Djanogly City Academy’s Virtual Academy created an impressive resource for a range of stakeholders using non-verbal navigation with excellent interactive content. Homewood School’s collaborative project on the restoration of the Cavell Van was part of an ongoing living history project and applied digital media as part of a larger community based initiative.

Baxter College’s cross cultural and comparative religions project was a topical idea with a great mix of imaginative online and offline activity and included collaboration with another school.

Projects from Hautlieu School, Jersey and Avonbourne School in Bournemouth were also highly commended. All five schools will be rewarded with long-term links with the digital industry, including access to the combined expertise of BIMA’s members and a pass providing students with the opportunity to experience BSkyB’s creative and news studios first hand.

The competition was judged by BIMA Education and Innovation Group members, Michael Collins, Ann Jamieson and Hal Robinson, Judith Masters, SSAT’s Head of Cultural Networks, and the Client Services team at digital agency Fortune Cookie. The event was attended by senior education dignitaries from academia and government sectors as well as key members from the digital industry.

For further information and photography from the event please contact Naomi Stern, Westgate Communications on 01732 779087 or at naomi@westgatecomms.com. For more information about BIMA and the Schools Digital Challenge, please click here.

The Shortlist:

1. Baxter College:
Submission: ‘BaxterVision’. An independent online television/information station.

2. Hautlieu School:
Submission: Digital archive of downloadable podcasts covering the years of the German occupation of Jersey, presented as a stand-alone website linked to the Jersey Museum and as a video wall in the War tunnels museum.

3. Our Lady and Saint Bede RC School:
Submission: A short film around the theme of ’shell shock’. They were incredibly moved by the stories of officers who suffered as a result of their experiences in the trenches and wanted to explore this further.

4. Hillcrest School and Community College
Submission: Hillcrest Learning Pod (HL Pod) and also a Hillcrest Learning Workstation (HL Workstation). These would be devices that pupils will use on a daily basis to enhance pupils learning and academic success.

5. Homewood School and Sixth Form Centre
Submission: To construct a highly interactive and user-friendly VLE to extend learner participation beyond the ‘traditional’ temporal and spatial confines of the school day.

6. Uplands Community College
Submission: A video and podcast available to be downloaded on portable multimedia players in French, Spanish and English. The video cast will allow the wider community to gain more knowledge about the place in which they live, work, attend school or visit.

7. Hampstead School
Submission: To provide Somalian mothers with IT activities in Somali that would help them to better support their children’s’ learning in secondary school thereby ensuring that they can play a fuller part in their children’s’ education.

We’re really proud to be pioneering this type of initiative; it’s a fantastic way to encourage our future innovators to think about new ways to use digital technology with real benefits for themselves and their communities, in the meantime, we have the hard task of deciding our overall winner and we’re really looking forward to announcing the winners next month.

Now then, there are many great initiatives out there (I sit on the steering group for some of them) and I don’t claim that we have all the answers but when we get responses from those involved on what this ‘Challenge’ has meant to them, then I know we are heading in the right direction…I just hope the much anticipated Digital Britain report from Lord Stephen Carter takes an in-depth look at how future talent are engaged and nurtured, like I said, there are many bodies and initiatives out there….all worthy but I do feel there needs to be a coherent strategy that is co-ordinated to gain the best outcome possible. This is where I strongly feel that BIMA can play a major part in the development of future talent and encouraging great ideas for our very talented creative industries.

Mirage.

Why do I ask? Well the reason is that I’m speaking at the Interactive Marketing Show in Manchester Nov 08 and will be talking about some of the best online campaigns and latest trends. So, if your agency or someone you admire in our wonderful industry has done something remarkable recently, then let me know and if it is truly outstanding then I’ll showcase it!

I look forward to hearing from you…

Mirage

For more info about the show: http://www.interactivemarketingshow.com/

So, at BIMA we are rising to the challenge and will be ‘Inspiring Future Talent’ from the the grass roots up! The plan is to engage with audiences from Schools, Academies and Universities working closely with the Digital Media Industry.

The first of our activities will be a Digital Challenge for schools nationwide and this is something that all BIMA members can get involved in, if you’re interested and you should be, then please get in touch at education@bima.co.uk.

Our mission – to bridge the gap between the education sector and the digital media industry with a view to ideas generation and knowledge transfer.

We will be pulling together some the most forward thinking brands, inspiring individuals from industry and innovative practitioners in the education sector to drive this forward.

We have set up a committee to focus on driving this initiative forward of which I, Mirage Islam, am the Chair my current and last role – Contributing Editor at Contagious Magazine and previously Future Media Lead at BSkyB – allows me to take knowledge gained and apply it to this major initiative. I’m delighted that BIMA’s chair Paul Walsh is fully supportive and the team, with a wealth of experience, comprises of Hal Robinson MD of Librios, Ann Jamieson MD at Price Jamieson now Aquent , Michael Collins MD i-Publishing and Andrew Henning CEO at Redweb Ltd.

BIMA are driving this agenda forward, if you are passionate about making a difference then let us know at education@bima.co.uk