Contest invites rural teachers, students to submit videos comparing their community with another

March 15 is the deadline for teachers and students in rural America to submit videos comparing and contrasting their community with a rural community in another part of the country or the world. Discovery Education and the Foundation for Rural Service have launched the Connected Community Contest "to demonstrate the power of broadband and digital resources in bringing the world to classrooms and providing students with skills needed to be college and career ready," the groups said in a news release. The grand prize is a grant for classroom technology. (Photo: Discovery Education, a unit of the Discovery Channel)

“Rural schools are increasingly feeling pressure to keep pace with their urban counterparts, which traditionally have had better access to learning technology and high-speed broadband,” foundation President Elizabeth Crocker said in the release. “This contest serves as another way to highlight the unique challenges rural communities face in providing cutting-edge technologies to their students and provides an opportunity for us to reward the innovations that those challenges have spurred.” The foundation was created by the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association.

The teacher-led contest is open to classes in grades 4-12 from schools located in rural communities of 50,000 or less as defined by the Department of Agriculture. To participate in the program, classes visit the contest website, where they will get access to Discovery Education's videostreaming service and other digital resources to identify rural communities around the world; research and explore their culture, lifestyle and economy; and create a submission that educates others about their own community and demonstrates how it is similar or different from a rural community in a different part of the country or world. Submissions can include images, video, audio, graphics or informational text and are to be in the final form of a produced video or video-captured presentation.