Driving Question
(Teacher Guided, Student Constructed)
How can we educate young students about how to keep themselves safe from hackers?
Public Products
Students develop and present a website, game, interactive presentation, or brochure to educate others about how to stay safe from hackers.
Connections
Foundations
Milestones
Milestone 1 (Days 1–2): Entry Event
Situation
The mayor has asked you to share your expertise concerning online safety and cybersecurity with an audience of 8-10 year old students in your community at a safety fair. They feel that you would be able to connect better with the kids than an adult would and that the students may listen to you better. The mayor wants you to share a topic on cybersecurity that would either help kids stay safe online or help them learn more about cybersecurity and cybersecurity careers. Because presentations can sometimes be boring, you need to create a project that will engage the children in a way that is interesting, informative, and fun.
Key Student Questions
- What is cybersecurity?
- What do I need to know about cybersecurity to protect myself?
- What topics in cybersecurity would be most important for me to teach to 8-10 year olds?
Formative Assessments
- Cybersecurity Definition
- List of Appropriate Cybersecurity Topics
Materials
- computers (1 per student or pair)
- internet access
- Encryption & Codebreaking Slides
- Pringles Can Enigma Activity
- Pringles Can Enigma Template
- Pringles cans (short stack) or 12-oz soda cans, 1 per student
- printer (color recommended)
- scissors and tape (for assembling rotors)
Instructional Procedures
- Introduce the history of cybersecurity and cryptography. Highlight the Enigma device used by Germany in WWII and how Allied codebreakers led by Alan Turing cracked it.
- Use the Encryption & Codebreaking Slides to show brief video clips on how Enigma worked and why it mattered. If you plan to play full clips (not just the embedded segments), preview them to ensure content is appropriate for your students.
- Run the hands-on cipher activity with the Pringles Can Enigma Activity:
- Provide each student with a Pringles can or a 12-oz soda can.
- Print the Pringles Can Enigma Template:
- For Pringles cans: print at Actual size (do not use “Fit”).
- For soda cans: in Adobe Acrobat, set a custom scale of 88%.
- Have students assemble their rotors and practice encrypting/decrypting.
- Decrypt the sample message from the slides; the plaintext is “CATS ARE FUNNY.”
- To debrief, use the following questions in a class discussion:
- What is cybersecurity? (Generate a class definition.)
- How is cybersecurity today different from the WWII Enigma era?
- What are some cybersecurity topics or principles that someone your age or younger should understand? (Generate a list of potential topics related to cybersecurity, such as open source intelligence, cryptography and ciphers, web app attacks, and binary attacks.)
- Present the project Situation: explain that the mayor has asked students to share their cybersecurity expertise with 8–10-year-olds at a community safety fair.
- They should choose a cybersecurity topic that helps kids stay safe online or sparks interest in cybersecurity and related careers.
- Because talks can be boring, their deliverable must actively engage children (interactive demo, hands-on station, game, mini-lesson, etc.).
- Guide students to frame a driving question such as, “How can we keep ourselves and others safe from hackers?”
Comments (11)
Good news everyone who is following these posts, Mike Wood (the author) has just updated the PBL plan with some new resources for easier implementation.
Do you think the Law and Public Safety Career cluster be tied into this PBL as well?
While the focus and milestones of this PBL is careers in coding to address hacking, the flip side is that hackers are subject to criminal charges. So yes, I do think careers in the Law and Public Safety Career cluster could be explored in this PBL.
I use NOVA PBS Cybersecurity Lab. Students only have to login if you want them to save their progress.
Our school is not letting us use this website: https://go.cyberstart.com/ – they now require students to login to complete the challenges. What is an alternative activity for day 1?
Yes, this is something that happened in November or December. For right now, I don’t have a good workaround. My district won’t allow students to login either unless we do a lot of vetting and contacting the company which I haven’t done yet.
For now, I may be focusing on the encryption side of things and the pringles activity I referenced in a comment below. Kids really liked the cybergo stuff, so too bad it’s hard to access. I will update if I find a good replacement.
Here’s another fun activity that goes with this PBL … use a can of pringles to simulate the German Enigma machine used during WWII to encrypt secret messages.
https://cyber.org/enigma
We’ve found that you can print the template at 88% and use it on soda cans as well if that’s easier on the budget.
Mike where would you add this resource? Under Milestone 2?
Here is a google slides presentation I use when doing the Pringles activity. It has several video clips highlighting how Enigma worked and briefly how Alan Turing was able to crack the German code.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1vHQlLSv7gnUU2iWGQaC5Eh3SeSmmHVlWVM_VTbzzvMA/copy
Mike
I am currently using this PBL in my CCA class. Is cyberbullying not part of cyber security? What are your thoughts?
Cyberbullying is certainly and issue of concern, but as this is a career awareness/exploration course, the PBL has been developed to explore cybersecurity careers. If the driving question was focused on “How could careers in cybersecurity track and remove cyberbullying posts in social media?” you might be able to explore this career area and using cyberbullying as the content to raise awareness about this issue.