A Northampton Area Middle School student team won two awards in the 2015 "What's So Cool About Manufacturing" Student Video Contest.

The NAMS students' two-minute video documents the work of Effort Foundry, 6980 Chrisphalt Drive, Bath, a supplier of high-integrity steel castings for the pump, valve, nuclear, power generation and military industries.

The seven-student NAMS team won two of the eight awards given during the 2015 Lehigh Valley Video Contest Celebration held Feb. 25 at Musikfest Cafe, ArtsQuest Center, SteelStacks, Bethlehem.

The NAMS students' team won the "Viewers Choice" Award and the "Outstanding Cool!" Award.

"We were the only school district to win two awards," said NASD Superintendent Joseph Kovalchik, who attended the awards presentation.

The students, along with a teacher and administrator, were honored at the March 9 Northampton Area School District Board of Education meeting.

On the NAMS student team were Mikalaya Davidson, Billy Bachiashivili, Matthew Eyre, Abby Wheeler, Jaime Mello, Caroline Bischof and Tyler Gilliard.

John Bendekovits, NASD Lead Technology Teacher, was team coach. Patrice Turner is NAMS principal.

More than 100,000 votes were cast on the "Dream It. Do It. Pennsylvania" website for the contest, now in its second year. The web votes counted toward the NAMS "Viewers Choice" award.

A judges panel chose the NAMS video for the "Outstanding Cool!" Award.

The NAMS students and their video contest awards were featured for two days on Adams Outdoors billboards along Routes 22 and 329.

At the NASD board meeting, the students displayed their two trophies, a poster about their video project and a scale-model of the billboard made by Jill Wheeler, sales manager, Adams Outdoor.

"It was a great learning experience for the kids. The kids were able to apply real-life skills," said Bendekovits. "It was a positive experience for the school district."

"It's an example of what students left alone are capable of doing supervised by a facilitator," said Turner.

Twenty-two middle school teams from Lehigh, Northampton and Carbon counties participated in the 2015 contest.

Other winners were Outstanding Program: Southern Lehigh (Crayola); Outstanding Editing: Nazareth (ABEC); Outstanding Creativity: Allentown Raub (Stanley Vidmar); Outstanding Team Spirit: Northern Lehigh (Amcor); Outstanding Educational Value: East Penn (Nestlé Waters North America); and Outstanding Videography: Bethlehem Northeast (Strahman Valves).

The student videos are telecast at 3:30 p.m. Fridays during March on PBS39.

The NAMS video and other student videos in the 2015 contest may be seen by visiting dreamitdoitpa.com/contests/2015-lehigh-valley-video-contest as well as on the Northampton Area School District web site's NAMS page, which is northampton.k12.pa.us/middle-school.cfm?subpage=10.