Internet votes in contest sought

BURWELL, Neb. — Every morning, Joy Schott gives her sixth-graders at Burwell Elementary School an update on the class's quest to earn a $30,000 national prize. And every morning, she gets a pretty strong response.

“It's very hard to control the excitement,” Schott said.

That goes for the teacher, too, as well as the students.

“I am usually not getting much sleep at night,” she added. “I'm on Facebook trying to make sure everyone's aware of the voting.”

The class is trying to win an “interactive classroom makeover” from the education technology company eInstruction through an online video contest.

The class produced a 2½-minute video to the tune of Billy Joel's “It's Still Rock and Roll to Me” extolling the virtues of technology in the classroom, titled, appropriately enough, “It's All Technology.”

This is the second year Schott's students have applied for the contest, but the first time they've made it to the final five entries that are voted on by the public.

Those votes are combined with judges' ratings to determine the winner.

Schott said the equipment awarded to the winning class — including a digital whiteboard and remotes that track each student's answers to questions in class — will help engage students in each lesson.

Instead of mentally checking out while other students raise their hands to answer questions or demonstrate activities, students can participate more fully, knowing everyone must try to answer each question, Schott said.

After Schott wrote the lyrics to the song, she and the class brainstormed ideas and scenes to demonstrate the value of using technology in the classroom, then produced the video using the editing software Movie Maker.

It was a project Schott took on enthusiastically.

“I love technology,” she said. “I'm one of those that, if I don't know it, I go and learn it.”

The students dived in, too.

The video includes scenes of students behind the desk at NTV's studios in Kearney, lying in a pile of money, and pretending to brand eInstruction's logo onto a cow.

Schott said the process of making the video has helped teach the students to band together, focusing on a common goal rather than their differences.

But the excitement has only grown since the video was finished, now that more than 200 online comments on the video have poured in from Burwell, across the state, and elsewhere.

The video had earned more than 1,500 votes as of Tuesday afternoon (only one vote per account is allowed), good enough for second place.

“I think the biggest excitement they've gotten is in seeing the word spread, with so many people seeing what we've produced,” Schott said.

“It just really opened our eyes to the magnitude of the Internet and the possibilities of the Internet.”

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