Kayla Benson’s sheet music kept falling off her stand during orchestra classes at Tecumseh South Elementary School.

So the 12-year-old started dreaming up invention ideas. She briefly mentioned to her parents the idea of an electronic music stand that would load sheet music on a screen with applications that include a tuner, a metronome and a recorder that would record musicians as they play.

The recorder could help a musician play better by pointing out corrections while they are practicing, and the I-Stand also would automatically keep up and turn the page for the musician.

A few weeks later, Kayla’s mother, Terri Benson, who works as a sales consultant at The Topeka Capital-Journal, came across an email about a national contest called "Wouldn’t It Be Cool If..."

The competition challenged students ages 10 to 15 to submit ideas for inventions.

Kayla asked her mother if she could enter her idea. Benson agreed, and Kayla got to work on her submission.

"I am positive musicians would love the i-Stand — it’s fun, modern and efficient," Kayla said about her invention.

More than 1,100 ideas were submitted by individual youths and teams from across the country, according to Time Warner Cable.

Time Warner Cable’s Connect a Million Minds and i.am FIRST, founded by artist will.i.am, jointly presented the competition.

Four finalists, including Kayla, were selected based on four criteria, creativity, feasibility, usefulness and awesomeness, with the latter being determined by an online public vote.

Kayla was notified she was a finalist for the competition. She began practicing her presentation skills with Joshua Schuler, executive director of the Lemelson-MIT program. Schuler helped coach Kayla before and during the event.

Kayla and her family, including her mom, her father, Mike Benson, and her sister, Karli Benson, at the end of April flew to St. Louis, where Kayla had the opportunity to pitch her idea live to judges, including will.i.am, at the FIRST Robotics Championship.

Kayla had the chance to meet other finalists and to record a television show in front of 1,000 people, Terri Benson said.

While Kayla’s invention wasn’t selected as the grand prize winner, the sixth-grader was told by will.i.am that he wanted to help her invention come to fruition. Kayla, who enjoys Girl Scouts, playing the violin and competing in softball, has been featured in Time For Kids.

"It was awesome. It’s exciting," Kayla said of her experience. "I didn’t win, but I think it will happen. He (will.i.am) is going to work with me to build it."