Two days before the Oscars, President Barack Obama recognized the best of nearly 2,500 films made by K-12 students after the White House asked them for short videos on the role technology plays in their education, according to the Associated Press.
"Today the Oscar goes to all of you because, among all the incredible videos we received, yours stood out," Obama said in the East Room, where two large screens were lit up to show the 16 films he said "are awesome," the AP reported.
"Like all great movies, yours do something special. They tell a story, they help us understand, in this case, the amazing things that are going on in classrooms and how technology is empowering our students and broadening their imaginations, challenging them to dream bigger and reach further," President Obama added, according to the AP.
Obama wants virtually every classroom to have high-speed Internet by sometime in 2018, the AP reported.
At the festival, he announced $400 million in new pledges to move the project along, including donations from the software companies Adobe and Prezi, the AP reported.
That's on top of $750 million in commitments he announced last month from Apple, Verizon, Microsoft and other companies, according to the AP. That brings to more than $1 billion the amount of cash and goods committed to the ConnectEd initiative.
The Federal Communications Commission also pledged $2 billion to connect 20 million students in 15,000 schools over the next two years, the AP reported.
Obama says the absence of high-speed Internet in classrooms hampers learning and affects U.S. competitiveness, according to the AP.
To that end, the festival was dreamed up to spotlight how technology helps students learn and to highlight Obama's proposal, the AP reported.
"The Academy Awards are not until Sunday, but, as you can see, we've brought the Oscars to the White House a little bit early," Obama said, according to the AP. "We've got the red carpet, we've got the big screens. ... The only difference is nobody asks what you're wearing."
The videos were limited to a maximum of 3 minutes, and each one was viewed multiple times by an "academy" of judges that included White House officials, the AP reported.
The filmmakers range in age from elementary to high school and come from 12 states and the District of Columbia, according to the AP.
