Happy new year from all at Shine!

The gates are down and I hope 2022 is off to a good start for you all after the slog that was 2021. I expect your students are giddy with inspiration and creativity after their Christmas hols (yeah right!, I hear you say), but to help any teachers out there who are struggling to motivate their students or who want get a Shine entry together but have limited time available, this month we will be focusing on our multimedia and podcast categories.

Multimedia is a new competition category for those schools whose students have put together a project involving at least two forms of media, and we hope to have an Ask the Expert video to offer advice on this increasingly popular method of communication very soon – watch this space. We are particularly keen to encourage multimedia projects which are accessible to the deaf – perhaps one of your students is learning sign language or you have a student with hearing difficulties who might like to get involved. The Shine competition is all about promoting and celebrating effective communication skills.

An increasingly popular award category is for Podcasts, which could be a short Spring Term class project if starting an entire magazine or newspaper seems daunting. To help, we have new podcast category guidelines, drawn up by Luke Chapman from the Young Writers competition. You may find that many of your pupils are already involved in producing podcasts or would love to learn how, and these step-by-step instructions will be really useful in guiding them through the process.

You will find them on our website here

Finally, we will be running another Teachers’ Q&A Forum this month for those teachers new to Shine – please do get in touch with Anneliese on shine@stationers.org if you’d like to take part. Huge thanks to old Shine hands Alan and Rosie for hosting these sessions which are so useful to teachers new to school publications.

Till next time!

Alison Strachan
Chair of Shine