High School students from around North Texas competed for thousands of dollars in prizes by helping protect their peers from scams.
The Better Business Bureau put up the prizes and sparked the competition to get students thinking about protecting themselves and work together on a real world project.
It’s not every day high school students get dressed up to attend a fancy dinner in a downtown Dallas hotel. Laura Nicely and Scott Cameron will tell you the work they’ve done recently is not like anything that typically happens in a classroom.
“I was baffled about how many people get scammed over easy things that can be completely avoided,” said Nicely.
“I always thought scams happen to old people; that’s what you see on TV and stuff. But people our age get scammed a lot more than you might think,” said Cameron.
Their assignment was to plan, write and shoot a video that will grab the attention of young people and help warn about scams. The BBB would distribute the video online, and the finalists would dress up and come to a star-studded awards banquet to watch the work of their peers and find out who did the best job.
“We’re going way beyond the 50 minutes of a class period to accomplish something like this,” said Morgen Crowder of Berkner High School in the Richardson Independent School District. “This is an opportunity to come up with an idea, collaborate with their peers and see it from the beginning all the way to the end, handle all the bumps that come up in between.”
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
The actual videos mixed in a lot of humor and laughter, but the message was clear and the final projects were on target.
Nicely, Cameron and their peers at Berkner High School walked away with a first place win and a lot of pride in what they’ve done.
“There’s a lot of good teams out there — a lot of good videos. It feels good to be one of the number one teams,” said Austin Wilbur.
The students walked away with cash donations that will go back into their school’s audio-video program. Other students received cameras, computers and other equipment to help them continue to produce other video projects.
