To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar a group of Year 8 Business and Enterprise students from Kings' School, Regents Park Community College and Sholing Technology College participated in a Trafalgar 200 Joint Project.
The Historic event was the main focus for the unique "All Girl" project. Pupils from each school joined forces to form four new companies to design and develop a range of products in commemoration of the Battle of Trafalgar.
The project was supported by the De Vere Grand Harbour Hotel in Southampton who gave the teams the five product commissions for use by the Hotel in their autumn program. The teams had to:
- Agree Company Name
- Design Corporate ID (Logo, etc)
- Agree Product
- Carry Out Customer Survey
- Research Public Knowledge
- Product Design
- Testing
- Production & Marketing
The Project has formed part of the girls continuing involvement with the CC4G project and, thanks to the long term support from IBM Hursley, has formed part of Xcite and the IBM mentor program. Each of the girls were able to interact directly with their IBM mentors to seek advice and support in setting up and running their businesses.
The University of Portsmouth hosted "Masterclasses" which provided the girls with specialist resources, help and support. Using the Virtual Schools Platform has enabled the girls to communicate and share their ideas and designs online, this was carried out by using secure forums and folders. We also attended many of the Trafalgar 200 sessions held at the schools on a weekly basis to offer our support and advice.
On Tuesday 19th July 2005 all four teams presented their work to friends, family and a panel of judges from IBM and De Vere Grand Harbour Hotel. The lucky winners were "Golden Horizons". The prize was a guided tour of HMS Victory in Portsmouth to reward their long term commitment and hard work. Congratulations to everyone who participated in and contributed fully towards the very successful Trafalgar 200 Project.
Trafalgar 200 is the first "Tripartite" online / offline project that we have run on the Virtual Schools Platform and we hope to run many more projects like this with other schools in the near future.