McKinley Middle school students' award-winning documentary to air on CSPAN

Three students at McKinley Middle Charter School in Racine will be interviewed live on Tuesday, April 27 on CSPAN's national morning call-in program, Washington Journal.

Madison Richards, Samantha Knoll and Lauren Nixon will discuss their winning documentary, "I've Got Power," which will air prior to Washington Journal at 6:50 a.m. on Tuesday. (Watch the documentary above.)

The McKinley students won $5,000 in the national StudentCam competition for their video about nuclear energy.

StudentCam, now in its sixth year, invited all students in grades 6-12 to produce a five-to-eight minute documentary focusing on one of our country’s strengths or a challenge the country is facing. Students overwhelmingly focused on challenges facing America, with health care and the economy as the top two issues addressed.

All winning videos are available to view at www.studentcam.org.

The annual competition is sponsored by C-SPAN Classroom and the documentaries were judged by a panel of C-SPAN representatives. The documentaries were evaluated based on the thoughtful examination of the competition’s theme, quality of expression, adherence to the time limit, inclusion of varying sides of the documentary’s topic, and incorporation of C-SPAN programming.

This year's StudentCam competition generated a record number of entries. Nearly 2,000 students from 45 states and the District of Columbia submitted 1,003 entries, an 8% increase over StudentCam 2009.

C-SPAN awarded a total of 75 student prizes and 11 faculty advisor prizes totaling $50,000, including: a grand prize winner, two first prize winners, eight second prize winners, 16 third prize winners, and 48 honorable mentions in both middle and high school categories.