Online voting has closed for the music video Girard High School students produced to make them one of five finalists competing in the eInstruction's Interactive Classroom Makeover Video Contest.
Students entered the 9th through 12th grade category of the contest, which asked students to make a music video demonstrating technology use at their school.
Created by seniors Ali Fonce and Lisa Holmes, the video is a parody of Lady GaGa's hit song "Just Dance" and before the vote count was hidden on the website, the video received more than 10,000 votes.
Online voting determined 40 percent of the final score for all five finalists in the contest. The remaining 60 percent is determined by a panel of seven judges. The winner of the contest will be announced Dec. 9.
Fonce and Holmes generated the idea for the video in their digital media class, where teacher Jamie Williams asked students to write a parody of a song and produce story boards for a music video.
After the assignment was complete, students in the class voted for their favorite and chose the Lady GaGa parody as the winner.
Fact Box
n Visit www.girardcityschools.org to view the video for "Just Learn."
"It was one of those things that it was just so strong from the start," said Williams of the Lady GaGa idea.
Together with other students, Fonce and Holmes spent almost a month creating the video, which was submitted on Nov. 2.
Since then, they say the community has been extremely supportive of their effort.
"It's a ridiculous amount of support. All the people we didn't think would get into it got into it," said Holmes of administrators and other officials.
If chosen as the winner, Girard will receive a grand prize of $63,318.99 worth of interactive technology, including white boards, student response systems, a projector, a laptop computer and web camera, subscriptions to academic services and more.
The prize would benefit all the city schools.
"Almost every grade level in the district would have access to technology that they didn't have before," Williams said.