James Houston II created a place where young computer scientists could not only train for a career in cybersecurity but compete to become the best middle-school code hackers in Arkansas.
The place is called Hacktopia, and on Tuesday 40 of the top students representing eight school districts gathered at the Arkansas River Education Service Cooperative for the state finals.
“It’s interesting. It’s one of those things a lot of kids at that age haven’t necessarily been exposed to, especially in high school,” said Houston, a cybersecurity and programming teacher at Jacksonville High School. “You have a situation where in high school, you’re either a computer kid or you’re not. For whatever reason, (it’s) just experience. And, so, at that level, you find a lot of kids who are like, ‘Hmm, I’m not sure if that’s what I’m going to do,’ and you have other kids who are like, ‘Hey, this is what I came here to do.'”
Hacktopia consists of code-hacking competitions and non-cybersecurity games including the classic Pac-Man, Pete’s Pike and nonogram to gain extra points. Another meeting room was turned into a laser field where teams had to walk through without setting off an alarm.
Houston worked with the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators to promote the second annual event.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
“We worked with James as he was trying to encourage more middle-school students to be involved with computer science in upper grades,” AAEA Executive Director Mike Hernandez said. “We work with a lot of middle-school principals across the state, so we helped him advertise to where they could get more involved in the competition.”
The event is a production of Houston’s cybersecurity professional development company, Enterceptor.
Houston started the company after his daughter, now 15, came home from school one day in third grade and told her father her class is programming.
“When she showed me, I said, ‘Whoa, time out! No, no, no. That’s something, but it’s not programming.’ That’s when I started volunteering in the schools to teach programming,” he said.
That led Houston to discover which disciplines in computer science are needed for the future of communities.
“Cybersecurity at that time was kind of a whisper,” he said. “I was like, ‘I know computer science, and in computer science we’ll be fine.’ But cybersecurity? Everybody needs cybersecurity. It is so necessary.”
An example Houston gave: Local businesses help make Pine Bluff and other small cities go, but those businesses run off the internet, which he calls the backbone of businesses.
“So, where are the professionals that protect the interest of the community?” Houston said. That’s what he hopes Hacktopia produces.
About 400 sixth- through eighth-grade students from 33 school districts competed in local events to qualify for the state Hacktopia. Forty of them representing eight districts took part in the state finals, won by a team from LISA Academy Rogers-Bentonville.
The team included sixth-graders Bentley Long and Vivaan Shivare, and seventh-grader Prem Bommareddy. R.J. Kazbyek is the coach.
“I’m into engineering and computer programming, so this is partially a thing that we would do in computer programming, software engineering and things like that,” Bentley said, asked why he competed in Hacktopia.
Kazbyek said he just taught the students the lessons behind each game and they practiced on their own.
“These guys are the smartest in the school, and I’m happy to have them on my team and I hope to win the same trophy next year with the same team,” Kazbyek said.