Car dealerships, “I voted” stickers, and a whole lot of Facebook shares and email blasts led to Great Oak High School winning the Intel AppUp® center Wired to Learn Contest. The Wired to Learn contest encouraged schools to tell their story about how a technology package would benefit their students. Schools from around the United States shared their stories and the public voted for the schools that would best benefit from the technology. The school with the most votes won a $25,000 technology package while two more schools won a $10,000 and $5,000 package. Great Oak High School received 8,529 votes while the runners up clocked 6,158 and 4,856 votes. So how’d they do it? And what will sort of technology did they choose for their schools?

The large student body at Great Oak helped get the word out about their contest entry for Wired to Learn. Their 3,400 students, 150 teachers and 40 members of the support staff rallied parents, friends and colleagues to get votes for Wired to Learn. Administrator Ingrid Taylor led the charge. She posted about the contest on their school’s website, on Facebook and on the Facebook pages of local businesses, including car dealerships. She created “I voted” stickers and a Wired to Learn how-to video for her Facebook page.

Great Oak’s technology is eight years old and the school has no wireless capabilities. The technology group faced a tough decision between new technology and wireless hubs. They chose new computers. “We often have to wait ten minutes or more for our computers to log on. Faster computers will make us a lot more efficient,” said Taylor.

The local papers showed their support for Great Oak with several stories, including this article in the North County Times about the schools in the area participating in contests to raise money.

“It was a lot of work, but the competition rallied the students,” said Taylor. All of their efforts paid off. The students at this grand prize winning school will benefit from the speed of new computers featuring powerful Intel processors.

Congratulations to Great Oak High School on their win!