FARMINGTON — A seventh-grader at Mt. Blue Middle School has won $100 in a writing contest sponsored by the online daily news site for tweens and teens, TweenTribune.com.

Miriam Cohen, 12, was recognized at a school assembly Wednesday as one of five national runners-up in a challenge that asked students to comment on the question, “How does technology make the world a better place?” in 100 words or less.

Each day, TweenTribune.com and its sister site for older readers, TeenTribune.com, post news stories that are selected by a panel of young adults who work with professional journalists, according to the website.

A “tween” is defined as a child usually between 8 and 12 years old. The two publications together target youngsters in grades 3 to 12 in hopes of fostering a daily news-reading habit at an early age.

Cohen’s teacher, Denise Mochamer, said this is the second year she is incorporating TweenTribune.com in the classroom. She likes it because it creatively incorporates reading, newspapers, writing and technology and now offers writing contests that she has made part of the classroom curriculum.

“The students are not mandated to enter but they have to respond for a language arts grade. The topics are fun and the writing very challenging because they have to use their words carefully to keep it at 100 words or less,” she said.

Another recent writing contest asked students, “If you could be any animal, which animal would you choose, and why?”

Students can use their laptops in class or at home to read articles in 20 categories, from sports to science to animals, and they can write and submit stories of their own or news items about their town.

If they choose to comment on an article, the responses are initially forwarded to the teacher’s computer where they are edited and a few selected to submit. The comments appear on the site anonymously, part of a stringent security policy to protect students.

“The site gets them interested in reading the news and gets them excited about it,” Mochamer said. “It is wonderful to see middle students so engaged in the news.”

Associated Press stories that appear on the website are updated daily.

The articles can be read by anyone but for students to comment and enter the contests, teachers have to register.

There are seven teachers registered in Farmington, mostly at Mt. Blue High School; 471 in Maine; and more than 44,000 nationwide, with about 1,000 registering daily, according to an e-mail from the site’s publisher and founder, Alan Jacobson, the father of two tween girls.

Cohen said after the event Wednesday morning that she opted to write her 100-word entry in the form of a poem because it was something different that might stand out.

She wrote:

“Connections/ a great world of connections/ not connected by nails or glue, but/ by wires and signals/ the things we know about the world get bigger and bigger/ as the distances between us get smaller and smaller, eaten down/ by technology/ the length around the world is 24,900 miles / but that number means less and less/ as the number of people, of ideas and thoughts connected with each other/ grows more and more.”

Cohen said the site provides an outlet for students. “I think the value of the site is that it gives us a chance to do creative writing, something we don’t have that much time to do in the classroom,” she said. “The contests give us a motivation to write.”

When she was asked how she uses technology during her daily life, she said she uses a computer and her iPod a lot but does not have a cell phone. If she needs one, she said, she borrows her mother’s.

She said she wasn’t sure how she would use her $100 prize money.

“Maybe I’ll use it to buy a cell phone,” she said.

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