LHMS students place in AwARe poster contest
PEARCY — Lake Hamilton Middle School students Aubrey Avaritt and Riley Mahoney recently competed in the Cyber AwARe Poster Competition designed to promote cyber safety among Arkansas public school students.
Avaritt, a sixth-grader, placed first in her grade group, grade 4-6, and Mahoney, a seventh-grader, placed third in her grade group, grade 7-9.
Both said they were shocked they placed in the competition. Avaritt said she entered it to have something to do, and Mahoney said she followed a concept her mom always told her when it came time to create her poster.
Mahoney’s poster was about staying safe online, she said, noting, “Be careful who you’re talking to. Make sure you’re being safe.”
Avaritt’s poster was about four ways students can stay safe online, including reporting it to an adult if someone is cyberbullying them or someone else; making passwords using symbols, numbers and letters; being careful when getting Wi-Fi from other places; and not sharing personal information.
Avaritt’s title for her poster was “Be Your Own Watch Dog.”
Mahoney said cybersecurity is important because a lot of people are not safe in today’s world.
“They don’t think anything can happen to them, but it could happen to them and it is a high possibility that it could happen to them,” she
said. “You need to be extremely safe and watch who you are talking to.”
“I think people need to be safe because people don’t think much about cyberbullying,” Avaritt said.
It took Mahoney a day and a half to come up with her poster idea and two days for Avaritt to come up with hers.
“I had to find facts about being safe, what to put on the poster and what to draw,” Avaritt said.
“I knew what I was doing so it didn’t take me very long to think of an idea,” Mahoney said.
“It makes me extremely proud,” Christy Ruffin, LHMS computer science teacher, said. “We had long discussions in class about what cybersecurity is and different ways to stay safe online. To see them take what we have learned in class and apply it to the process of creating (their posters is) something awesome.”