West Elementary School in Sycamore seeks votes for $60K prize

SYCAMORE – West Elementary School could see a lot of good coming from several thousand dollars in potential prize money, school librarian Tracy Egerman said.

Egerman said the average publication date of the books in the school's library is in the year 2001. To hopefully buy newer books for West, she said, the school submitted a video of students using the virtual reality learning tool Google Expeditions for the Follet Challenge, which is held by the company from which the school buys books and curriculum materials, to try for a $60,000 first prize.

"We could replace our whole library with that," Egerman said.

At the very least, Egerman said, the school could have a chance at one of the 10 prizes for $8,000, which are marked for the videos with the most votes. She said people can vote on the contest website once a day until Friday.

Egerman said the school's library is the oldest in the Sycamore School District 427 and houses the oldest books within the district's collection. She said the nonfiction sports section has an average age of 2010, whereas the library's fiction books have an average age of 2004, the nonfiction books about animals have an average age of 2000, and the nonfiction history books have an average age of 1999.

"If you look at some of the planets books, they're still saying Pluto's a planet," Egerman said.

Egerman said she has been writing grants for more books in the meantime, but there's still a need for newer and more appealing books kids will more likely read.

West's Principal Kristi Crawford said that if the school wins any prize money, staff will look to buy library and instructional materials from the company to benefit all of the students in the district. She said the video demonstrates how the school has been using innovative technology in the classroom to help better involve students in the lesson, especially considering 65 percent of the world's population are visual learners.

The virtual reality technology was first introduced to West classrooms in the past couple of months, Crawford said. The first time she observed Google Expeditions being used in a classroom, she said, it was great to see the kids be so enthusiastic about "visiting" places they might never get the chance to visit in real life.

"They were so engaged, it was absolutely incredible," Crawford said.

The school's submitted video is called "I Wonder..." and voting takes place at follettchallenge.com.