NEAH BAY — Students at Neah Bay School already have received more than $1,000 worth of technology in a national contest and have a good chance of winning another $70,000 to $100,000 in technology in January, said Ann Renker, Neah Bay principal.
A team of teachers and students at the middle and high school are top 25 finalists in Samsung’s second annual Solve for Tomorrow contest, a $1 million science and technology contest for teachers and students across the United States.
“We received a camcorder, laptop computer and digital editing software,” Renker said.
The prize for getting into the top 25 allows the students to continue with the next step in the contest.
Each of the 25 teams will make a documentary about a local environmental project.
For the project, two mentor teams of student documentary filmmakers will use the equipment provided by Samsung to film other students working with the Makah tribe in a project to use mushrooms to clean diesel fuel-contaminated sand.
The final documentary film will be submitted to Samsung in January.
If the Neah Bay film makes the cut for the $70,000 prize, the students will move to the next step in the contest for $100,000 in technology.
Samsung has received more than 1,300 submissions since August.
STEM program
Renker said she believes the school was selected for the top 25 because of its Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics — or STEM — program that teams high school mentors with middle school students for math and science education.
“They saw we were on the cutting edge with our middle school-high school mentoring programs,” Renker said.
The program is so popular that middle school students are clamoring to join, she said, and there aren’t enough high school mentors to go around.
Middle school students are starting to see science and math as “cool,” partly thanks to the students who are the mentors, she added.
“Seven of the 20 high school mentors were on our championship football team,” Renker said.
The response shows that students can be both athletes and scholars, taking science and math out of the “geek” category, she added.
Samsung has not revealed exactly what technology schools will be able to get from the contest, Renker said, but she hopes that there will be options for e-book readers, tablet computers and other current technology the school needs to prepare students for 21st century employment.
Washington state is a national leader in available jobs, but most of those jobs are in the science and technology sector, Renker said.
Meanwhile the state is 46th in preparing students for these jobs, she said.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.