You’ve heard the expression that a picture is worth a thousand words. If that’s true, there are a whole lot of words on the minds of Hawaii’s students. Their original artwork is part of i-SAFE’s National Poster Contest. Three Hawaii schools took part: Mrs. Miyasato’s young students at St. Ann’s Model School, Ms. Kelly’s 7th grade class at Maryknoll Grade School, and Ms. Nishite’s 10th graders at Moanalua High School.

Theresa Nishite is the Science and Media teacher at Moanalua High School. Her students were excited about creating the posters because they all learned Photoshop, and the contest gave them the opportunity to use the graphics-editing software to be creative, to think visually and to put it all together to reach and persuade an audience. Working on their posters also focused the students on a wide range of Internet safety topics, and how they can make a difference in the lives of others. “It’s interesting how many ways kids can get into trouble in the digital age,” Theresa said.

Two of the winners of i-SAFE’s National Poster Contest came from Ms. Nishite’s class.

Kasey’s entry, titled “Stay Alive Don’t Text and Drive” earned her 3rd place in the High School division. Kasey told her teacher afterwards that she cares about texting and driving because a lot of people she knows do that, and she worries about their well-being.

i-SAFE’s judges also liked her classmate Andrew’s entry. His “Delete Cyber Bullying” poster earned him 2nd place in the High School division. All the posters entered in this contest were judged on the basis of originality, imagery, and the Internet safety message conveyed through the art. i-SAFE received entries from all over the country.

Students were encouraged to either choose a topic from the following list of suggestions: Cell Phone Texting, Cyber Bullying, Gaming, Online Predators, Piracy, Social Networking, or were allowed to come up with a topic on their own. The posters i-SAFE received not only varied in regards to the Internet safety topic represented, we also saw differing artistic styles. Some of the posters were computer generated while others were hand drawn.

A big “thank you” goes out to every student who participated in the contest and to every teacher who chose to make this fun exercise a learning activity. Educators agree that this kind of critical-thinking experience helps students better understand and learn the subject matter. Next up is i-SAFE’s national video contest. Check out http://xblock.isafe.org/ for more info.

Parents, take an interest in what your children are doing online, and learn as much as you can about e-Safety.  i-SAFE provides easy and convenient i-PARENT online training at http://ilearn.isafe.org/. You can also learn more at http://www.isafe.org/, or our new Web site just for Hawaii at http://www.isafehawaii.org/.