ICT

AUSTRALIAN COMPUTING ACADEMY CYBER SECURITY ROADSHOW

The school has been involved with the Australian Computing Academy (ACA) for some years now largely through their Grok platform. Students across all year groups has been successfully competing in coding and website design challenges for the past four years so when some new courses in the field of Cyber Security came up, the ICT faculty decided to check them out.

After looking at the resources available, we decided to enrol all our Year 7 students in the “Information Privacy and Security - Schools Cyber Security Challenge”. Our current Year 7 curriculum includes a topic called Digi Kids which focuses on being aware of the Digital World in which we live and the consequences of sharing information online so this challenge fitted in perfectly with this topic.

Enrolling over 400 students in the course caught the attention of the ACA who contacted the school and asked if a member of staff would attend their upcoming roadshow and give a talk on how they were integrating the Cyber Security Challenge into their curriculum.

On Tuesday, 28 May, I took a trip into Exhibition Street to attend the ACA roadshow. There were some really high profile people from the field of Cyber Security on the panel including:

David Fairman, Chief Security Officer at NAB

Lynwen Connick, Chief Information Security Officer (or CISO) at ANZ

John O'Driscoll, CISO of the Victorian Government

Michelle Price, CEO of AustCyber

Luke Barker, BT Cyber Security Sales Lead

They all had a very interesting story to tell about their careers and how they got into Cyber Security but collectively agreed that by 2025 Australia will have a skills shortage of some 18,000 people in this field. This shortage will cost the country millions as this article explains https://bit.ly/2HIwDBw

I was the last speaker of the day and, to be honest, it was quite daunting standing up in front of these people giving my short presentation on how the school was promoting the Cyber Schools Challenges. We have had some students become totally engaged in the challenge and I was asked if I could give them some feedback from a student’s perspective. I have chosen to share this wonderful article from Suen Kee of 7C rather than my own presentation. Not only is it a fabulous article but it shows how captivating the challenges are for the students and hopefully encourages them to consider a career in Cyber Security in the future.

As my teacher, Mrs Munro, was explaining how Grok works, I had my Chromebook half open already. That was how excited I was. I, who had participated in the Web.comp, already knew how the Grok platforms worked. I also knew how fun and addictive it is. As soon as Mrs Munro had finished explaining, I already had the word ‘Grok’ typed into the search bar.

This cyber security course showed children how much personal information can be pieced over time. It did this through a series of fun sleuthing activities. You flick through all posts and comments to find the needed information. After completing this course, you realise how easy it is for hackers to find out your passwords, location, and contacts. Most astounding of all, is that all this information can be found in mere pictures and comments that you have posted.

I had sped through the first few challenges, the problems were relatively easy. But others had been a complete different story. They challenged my brain and that is why I love Grok. Grok is filled with challenging challenges that tease your brain. Even if you get it wrong, it gives you constructive feedback that encourages you to keep going.

When I came across obstacles, I persisted and cracked them all. And I think that is why Grok is so beneficial for children. Not only does it teach you things about the digital world, but it also encourages you to solve every problem. When you get a problem wrong, it doesn’t just leave you hanging unaware of where you went wrong. Instead, it gives you constructive feedback so you can check back and see where you went wrong, before changing it to the correct answer.

Most of the challenges I had done, were completed outside school hours. I was introduced to this course on a Friday and had completed it all by the end of the weekend. That shows how addictive it was. I loved searching through all the information, before piecing them together like a puzzle. Each time I had finished a challenge, I would crave to complete the next one.

Overall, I believe that this new cyber security is beneficial for all children and teenagers. It shows you how much information is out there about you; how easy it is for hackers to steal your personal information. I don’t think many people are aware that their private information is out there for the world to see. So how much information are you revealing to the world?

Suen Kee

Year 7C

Some of the Year 7 students who completed the first challenge in record time, are now working on the second challenge - Cryptography. It’s a whole lot harder but it is so encouraging to see some of these students take the challenge on and test themselves further.

Shirley Munro

ICT Teacher