Do you trust the security of your email, text messages, and browser history? Learn how trustworthy online communication actually is and how encryption can protect your privacy. Sometimes.
Explore(20 min) Students explore a hypothesis and collect data
The Internet is fundamentally insecure. However, there are simple things you can do to protect yourself and your information. This video also provides an introduction to the activities in the Cybersecurity Lab.
Students will be able to analyze reports of unfolding security breaches and apply their understanding of security networks to them
Follow the trials and tribulations of Tim as a seemingly innocent piece of information threatens to ruin his life when it falls into the wrong hands.
Learn how to protect yourself, your family, and your devices with tips and resources from the National Cyber Security Alliance.
The Cybersecurity Lab is accessible on web and mobile browsers that support HTML5, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer (version 9.0 and higher)
Students will be able to explain computer science terminology related to coding, password protection, social engineering, and network security
Students will be able to explain why the term hacker is extremely flexible and the variety of roles that hackers play
Instruct students to create a list of tips that they would follow to avoid online scams and to create reliable passwords.
Engage(10 min) Intro activity that poses a question or calls upon prior knowledge
The Cybersecurity Lab contains terms that may be unfamiliar to educators and students. In the game, these terms are highlighted with definitions that appear as mouse-overs. Below is a document with all of these terms:
Reconvene and discuss some of the best practices that they learned and whether they encountered any information that supported or contradicted the tips they compiled before the game.
Challenge students with the question, How aware are you of the best practices for staying safe online? Explain to students that in the game, they will explore ways that they can stay safe online and avoid security breaches.
Players are presented with two apparently similar emails or websites. They must first identify the differences between them and then decide which one is a scam attempting to steal their information or money. This challenge also includes a number of audio recordings and transcripts of phone calls; players have to decide if they should trust the caller or not.
Educators should also use this opportunity to assess student learning, with short response discussion questions summarizing best practices, the cybersecurity stories, and the glossary terms.
Instruct students to complete the remainder of the game and to take notes on other best practices they encounter while playing the game. The Cybersecurity Lab also works well for group play, as students can collaborate in problem solving.
In this video from NOVA scienceNOW, meet Luis von Ahn, a computer scientist and professor at Carnegie Mellon who is already at the top of his field at age thirty. Learn about one of his most successful ideasCAPTCHAa test that humans can pass but computers cannot, which has been used to improve the security of Internet sites.
An introduction to very basic coding skills. Players program a robot to navigate a maze, using drag-and-drop commands.
Hackers may not be who we think they are. In fact, you might be a hacker and not even know it. Learn the true meaning of hacking and some of the many reasons hackers hack.
Professor, Oxford Internet Institute
We deliver high-quality research and education and offer solutions for the future.
Learn the basic concepts of computer science with drag-and-drop programming. This is a game-like, self-directed tutorial featuring video lectures by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Angry Birds, and Plants vs. Zombies. The Hour of Code is a continuation of the skills and problem-solving strategies that students encounter in the Coding Challenge, where they learn repeat-loops, conditionals, and basic algorithms.
After watching the videos, facilitate an in-class discussion with students about the content. Possible discussion topics include: 1.) The changes in technology in the past 15 years that have made cybersecurity such a pressing issue, 2.) Students experiences with cybersecurity, or 3.) How much of their lives students share online and the ramifications of sharing
Code Academy offers free, interactive courses for learning how to code. Learn everything from HTML to PHP and demonstrate your mastery of these coding languages by building websites and manipulating data in servers.
Encourage students to create a NOVA Labs account before they start the Cybersecurity Lab for at-home or in-class completion. With an account, students will be able to save their progress in the Lab and also generate a Lab Report that tracks their completion of the game and video quizzes.
Use theCybersecurity Lab video quizzesas a formative or summative assessment to gauge student understanding of the content.
Students will be able to describe recent network security breaches and how companies defend against them
The Cybersecurity Lab includes four short animated videos that cover a variety of cybersecurity and computer science topics:
Students will use analytical reading skills to distinguish among phishing attempts, fraudulent websites, and phone scammers in the Social Engineering Challenge
Students will be able to describe how encryption works to protect privacy
Students will be able to navigate a robot through a maze using Blockly code in the Coding Challenge
Elaborate(45 min) Apply content knowledge and skills to problem (guided practice)
For discussion questions and lessons plans, go to theCybersecurity Lab collectionon PBS LearningMedia.
As their companies grow, players must buy defenses to defend themselves against a series of cyber attacks. The better that players do in the three challenges, the more resources theyll have to buy defenses.
Evaluate(20 min) Formal assessment (independent practice)
Cybersecurity Lab Standards Alignment Guide
The Cybersecurity Lab is a great resource for educators who want to teach their students best practices for staying safe online and introduce them to computer science principles and the architecture of online networks. In addition, school technology and media specialists can use the Cybersecurity Lab as an orientation activity for students before they begin using online resources. English and social studies educators can also use the Cybersecurity Lab to reinforce textual analysis skills, as students must find textual evidence, draw inferences, and make judgments about the validity of sources in the Social Engineering Challenge.
Students should complete the video quizzes and turn in their Lab report with confirmation of Lab completion.
Learn about Watson, the Jeopardy!-playing supercomputer in this video excerpt from NOVA scienceNOW: How Does the Brain Work? Created by a team at IBM, Watson was designed to answer questions on a variety of subjects and was put to the test by competing against human contestants on the quiz show Jeopardy!.
Present the best practices and the glossary terms that are essential to understand cybersecurity and instruct students to take notes.
The Cybersecurity Lab reinforces scientific and engineering practices and crosscutting concepts found in theNext Generation Science Standards. To see how the Cybersecurity Lab can be used to meet course objectives, download our standards alignment document below:
Upon completion of the Cybersecurity Lab game, assign the cybersecurity stories as reading assignments with discussion questions that students can complete for homework.
Explain(15 min) Direct instruction and content delivery
The Cybersecurity Lab is a game designed to teach people how to keep their digital lives safe, spot cyber scams, learn the basics of coding, and defend against cyber attacks. Players assume the role of the chief technology officer of a start-up social network company that is the target of increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks. In the game, players must complete challenges to strengthen their cyber defenses and thwart their attackers. The Lab also features stories of real-world cyber attacks, a glossary of cyber terms, and short animated videos that explain the need for cybersecurity, privacy versus security, cryptography (cyber codes), and what exactly hackers are.
Instruct students to complete all the Level 1 challenges in the game.
I research and teach information security, privacy-enhancing technologies, and Internet regulation.
In this video from NOVA scienceNOW: Can Science Stop Crime?, explore how advances in information technology are making cars increasingly susceptible to cyber attacks.
A series of password duels teach players the basics of how attackers might try to crack their passwords and how they can make better, more secure passwords.
Note: The Coding Challenge uses a Blockly interface that requires no prior knowledge of coding. Blockly uses a visual representation of code as blocks rather than a scripted programming language.
Students will use logical reasoning to create strong passwords in the Password-Cracking Challenge
There are four major gameplay components of the Lab:
Have students watchCybersecurity 101and discuss what they know about cybersecurity and what safety measures they currently take with their online information.