2011 SchoolE Award Winners

The nominations have been sent, sites judged, the votes cast & validated and now we’re proud to announce the 2011 SchoolE Award Winners!

Small
Lexington City Schools



Medium
York County Public Schools



Large
Clear Creek ISD


Congratulations to these districts and thanks to all the districts who participated! Also a big thanks to everyone who helped make this year's awards happen.

Prizes
Each winning district will receive the following prizes:

• Video review of district site by Nick Denardis.
  Nick will be reviewing the top district in each category. As host of his EDU Checkup video blog he reviews education websites through the eyes of a first time visitor, while critiquing the design, information architecture and code of the sites. Keep a look out on the blog and Twitter for links to these videos when they’re done!
• Full Feedback Analysis of Website
• Tons of exposure
  In addition to the media exposure of the event, winning districts will be featured in a press release to major media outlets that include national and regional newspapers and news sources, targeted both to your geographical area and nationally. Winners will also be featured heavily within Social media and networking sites, such as Twitter (@allofek12), Blogger, Facebook, focused on the K-12 sector.A badge to proudly display on their district website
• And More....

Recap of Voting
The voting round ended up being a total of 6 weeks and the districts really took advantage of every single one of those weeks. The competition started out strong with Brownsville, Rockingham, and Lexington being the category leaders.

In the Medium category Rockingham came out ready to win with over 1,000 votes in the first week - that’s more votes than they had nominations! Overall the category maintained their momentum all throughout voting. There was so much competition and many lead changes within this category that you never know what district might steal the #1 position. York County had been on Rockingham’s tail since week 2 of voting and finally surpassed them for the #1 position in week 4. Their victory was a little short-lived; Rockingham came back the next week and with over 1,000 votes in one day, they regained the title. But York hadn't been too far behind since. When voting ended Rockingham was in the lead, but once the votes were validated York was so close behind they ended up in the first place position! Oxnard Union High, Upper Darby, and Independence 30 we also strong competitors. While they didn’t see quite the vote count of the lead districts, the competition for 3rd place was definitely worth watching.

Districts in the Large category had their fair share of competition as well, but it didn’t start until later on. It seemed no one was going to give Brownsville or Keller ISD any trouble until week 3 when Clear Creek started receiving votes in droves, providing both schools with competition and stealing the #1 spot. Although Brownsville was never able to steal back that position, they stayed strong and kept up with Clear Creek’s voting. Both districts put forth a lot of effort in this competition!

Small districts started off the competition slowly, but they surely moved their way on up in votes. Lexington City and Zachary Community were the front runners in this category. Once they hit over 500 votes their competition was only with each other. These two districts changed #1 position for the category almost weekly until the last two weeks of voting showed a landslide of votes from Zachary Community, which put them further ahead than they had ever been before. At the end of voting Zachary Community seemed to be the winner but after a validation of all the votes Lexington came out on top! With these two districts it was a close call! They should both be proud though, their overall vote counts were in the same range as Large category winner Clear Creek!

Exposure
With this year’s awards every district is a winner! The exposure districts have received has been phenomenal! The SchoolE site has seen page views from 64 countries around the world and of all the page views 75% of them were unique visits!

SchoolE has also gained exposure in the news. Local newspapers and radio stations have been doing stories on the awards and finalists such as K2 Radio in Casper, WY and The Ledger in Lakeland, FL. and Daily Press in Newport News, VA.

As well as news articles, SchoolE press releases have been featured on a number of educational blogs and sites such as eSchool News. The districts were very proud of their finalist statuses as well, they displayed their finalists badges on their sites and issued press releases about the awards. Here are just a few of the many press releases done by schools- Keller ISD, Clear Creek ISD, and North Mason SD.

In Closing
This year’s SchoolE Awards was a great success! So many schools were dedicated to giving their district site the recognition it deserved. It’s so awesome to see communities come together to support their schools.

Although the awards for this year are over, your part is not! Please let us know about any suggestions, comments, or questions you’ve had about the competition. Leave us a comment on the SchoolE homepage and tell us what you liked, didn’t like, or would like to change. We listen to every single one - suggestions from last year helped us make this year’s awards even better and that’s what we want to see with next year as well!

Thanks again to all the districts, everyone who nominated and voted, our amazing judging panel, and everyone who helped with the awards along the way.

Make sure to keep an eye out for Nick’s video reviews and check back for more information on this year’s awards and next years!

Here’s hoping to another great year of SchoolE Awards in 2012!