Comsewogue Fifth Graders in Finals to Win Thousands in Educational Technology

Maybe the idea of a fifth grade class at Boyle Road Elementary School beating out over 1,600 other entries and winning thousands of dollars worth of high tech educational equipment isn’t so crazy after all.

That’s what teacher Tara Falasco and her students are thinking right now. Their video – based on the oft-parodied mega pop hit “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen – is a finalist in a contest run by eInstruction in its “Flip Our Classroom” music video competition. The grand prize is $75,000 worth of technology for the school.

Falasco said that her students are excited about being finalists in the competition.

“In the beginning, they just wanted to do something fun and create a music video,” she said. “Once they saw the competition, they started to think that we have a chance of winning.”

The video was made with the help of Michael Wood, a fourth-grade teacher at Boyle Road Elementary School. Falasco wrote the lyrics.

“The students gave the enthusiasm,” she said.

In the video, the students want to get themselves the electronic learning system but have to figure out how to do it. Then the kids break into song and dance to the pop melody while singing lyrics like "Hey we just met you and this is crazy but here's our classroom so flip us maybe!"

In order to qualify, the video needed to show how students use the technology in the classroom and depict them making the project while having fun doing it.

Falasco said that if they win, the equipment will “bring classroom learning to a whole new level.”

The new technology replaces a traditional blackboard. Multiple students can write on the interactive white board at one time so more they can be involved during a lesson and a mobile interactive tablet allows students to show their work to the class right from their desks.

“The student response systems are individual clickers that each student would get to use during a lesson to allow for real time assessment data and allows all students to get involved in a lesson,” said Falasco.

According to the company sponsoring the competition, the grand prize is a bundle of educational technology including eInstruction’s Insight 360, Pulse 360, Mobi, and DualBoard, as well as products from sponsors Adaptive Curriculum, Fablevision, InFocus, and Starrmatica.

While all that technology sounds like a boon for learning in the classroom the students who worked on the video – like fifth-grader Autumn Dennis – are just happy to see their video make the finals.

“It was a lot of hard work and I’m just happy to see it paid off,” Dennis said.

Falasco’s Boyle Road Elementary School video submission, “Flip Us Maybe,” is now available for the general public to vote on through Dec. 7. Grand-prize winners will be announced on Dec. 11. Click here to see the video and vote. You can also vote on Facebook by clicking here. (Ms. Falasco’s class is the last video in the K-5 row.)