Computer Science
&ENGINEERING
CS 426 Spring 2024
Capstone
PROJECT
Elementary Cyber Security
Educational Website
Our Story
We aim to educate and encourage kids to be involved in cyber security and build the foundation for them to be capable of protecting themselves and others in the future.
Our lesson plans are designed to be exciting and accessible so that both teachers and kids find them informative and useful.
Project Description
The project consists of six courses designed to cover a variety of Cyber Security topics. These courses are as follows, Code Breaking, Internet Hygiene, Social Engineering Defense, Malware Prevention, Networking, and Online Habits. These courses will be available in varying stages of difficulty to provide to a variety of education levels while presenting this information in digestible courses to our targeted education level K-6. We want to focus on making this website primarily for students, but have goals to implement teacher tools to help track progress and assign courses. This product will be available for free and available to anyone who wants to learn or teach foundational Cyber Security practices. Our product has courses, quizzes, assignments, and will have accounts that store user data and track progress.
When dealing with education, it's important that our product doesn’t contain misinformation, discrepancies, or create an environment that facilitates hate, harm, or risk to any of our users. First, in terms of reliability, it's important that we make sure our website can be accessible to our audience, but also available to those who might have differentiating circumstances. We are taking actions in making our website ADA compliant, as well as meeting state standards for cyber educational websites. We’ve decided to only focus on meeting Nevada state requirements in regards to website accessibility, but using a variety of sources for Cyber education standards.
Team 30
Instructors
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External Advisors
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Resources
Sources that guide us on our journey
Problem Domain Book
Teaching Cybersecurity: A Handbook for Teaching the Cybersecurity Body of Knowledge in a Conventional Classroom (Security, Audit and Leadership Series)
Daniel Shoemaker
Acts as a guide for educators attempting to understand and formulate lesson plans on cybersecurity for their pupils. Teaches both the content and the pedagogy to the teachers.
Relevant Articles
THE IMPORTANCE OF CYBERSECURITY AWARENESS FOR CHILDREN
Outlines the reasoning for our mission in the first place, emphasizing the expanding role of network technologies in children's lives and education in the post-COVID-19 era.
EXPLORING CYBERSECURITY EDUCATION AT THE K-12 LEVEL
Examines different curricula for cybersecurity education in K-12 students. Then makes recommendations for material and lesson plans based on the strength of these identified curricula.
CYBERSECURITY AWARENESS FOR CHILDREN: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW
Identifies the growing number of cyber space risks to children while also examining different pedagogies to teach how to mitigate each of them to a younger audience.
Relevant Links
Cybersecurity Awareness Program Parent and Educator Resources
A short list of resources for teachers and parents to use such as teaching about digital footprint, safeguarding devices, and being safe on the internet.
The NICE K12 Cybersecurity Education Conference
https://www.k12cybersecurityconference.org/
A link to the NICE K-12 conference that is held to show presentations, experiments, and innovations regarding CyberSec education.
KnowBe4 Cybersecurity Activity Kits
https://www.knowbe4.com/cybersecurity-activity-kit
KnowBe4 is a security awareness training website for industry standards It tools to help companies protect their employees from making mistakes that could harm the company.
Other Resources
Center for Internet Security - 6 Cyber Resources for Kids
https://www.cisecurity.org/insights/blog/6-educational-cybersecurity-resources-for-kids
Useful resources for further sites like this one that can enrich the classroom experience when teaching cybersecurity.
CISAs Cybersecurity Awareness Program
Outlines the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's program and own directory of resources for teaching K-12 students the fundamentals of the cybersecurity profession.