Thank you for taking the time to watch our video – and welcome to the discussion!

CyberMiSTS is still in the development stage; our first curriculum development workshop with teachers will be held in July 2019. CyberMiSTS builds on a prior NSF project (https://www.ic.sunysb.edu/Projects/bigsce/) using branching web comics* to raise awareness in middle school students about cybersecurity concepts and careers. We found that students enjoyed the comics approach, but getting participation in the afterschool workshop was a real challenge. This was in part because the adults (teachers, administration, parents) thought that only students that were already “good at STEM” should participate in cybersecurity. In fact, the opposite is true: current research shows that we can teach the technology, but we need true diversity of thinking to resolve our significant cybersecurity challenges.

*If you want to see what a branching web comic is, take a look at these samples:  https://comic-bee.com/comic/.

We are excited to engage with you all this week and answer any questions you may have about our project, but we are also interested in learning from YOU:

1. If you had to teach middle school students about cybersecurity, what would you want to know, or have, beforehand?
2. Do you use stories to engage students in what they're learning? Examples please!
3. If you’re involved in a makerspace, library, camp or other informal learning opportunity, would you be interested in offering a module on cybersecurity concepts and careers for students, and what supports do you anticipate needing?

And before you leave the showcase, be sure to vote for your favorite video - even if it isn’t ours!

Hi Lauren, Very much enjoyed this presentation about a field that is only going to get larger and larger and can motivate students. I thought that you might be interested in communicating with the leaders of another project on the video showcase (Discovering Digital Forensics)  https://stemforall2019.videohall.com/presentati... that is for high school students, but may still be very relevant.

Have you run these workshops for teachers yet? How have they responded? Do they have time within their curriculum to incorporate this? Do you expect that they will teach this during the school day or after-school? Very interested to hear more. Thanks!

Hi Joni! We will run the first workshop this July. Teachers of other subjects often already have a packed schedule with no time to add new curriculum, so in CyberMiSTS we target CTE teachers. They will be creating a module to teach during the school day - the length of that module depends on their students, their school and how prepared a teacher feels after the workshop. We already know some participating schools are looking to build out a more complete cybersecurity curriculum in the middle school to "queue up" students for the high school curriculum, but I'm honestly hoping we can help teachers create curriculum that gets their whole class interested in learning more about cybersecurity.

Thanks for the pointer to the Digital Forensics presentation, I'm still sifting through the list to see what all is here!

Hi Laurin, I was excited to learn about your project! I was wondering about what a cybersecurity lesson might look like in middle school. What sorts of issues do you anticipate building the curriculum around? Thanks! Kristen

I totally agree with you that reaching out to students in their middle school years is important. I was especially interested in your statement (in the video) about wanting to increase participation for those students who are more interested in "creative and social issues that in science and technology" and (in your comments) wanting to attract interest from those students who do not already identify as being interested in STEM. I understand that the interactive branching web comics is a way to facilitate this, and am interested to learn more (likely after the teachers have implemented this into their classrooms) about how successful this is and what the students think about it!

I'm a music major (BA) with art history grad school who never studied computer programming, yet for the last 20+ years I've had a very successful career in cybersecurity, including managing corporate security; I'm now a practitioner turned researcher. In the past I've been floored many times by colleagues who had CS degrees who demonstrated a lack of understanding about a) business needs, b) consequences of tech that can be abused c) the creativity of both attackers and unhappy employees or d) all of the above.

Middle school students in our prior NSF project really liked reading the branching comics, but liked creating their own story even more. Students in the first workshop initially struggled with the idea of creating of branching paths, but in later workshops we had worked how to scaffold them through this process.  We've also had university instructors assign writing a comic in lieu of a term paper - and that has had very good feedback from both instructors and students. I can share more if you're interested in that.

Just to clarify: branching comics are part of the curricular materials, but there are many more materials & activities that will be included and available for the teachers to use. The comic is partly to get students to engage with the topic.

And - if anyone interested, there is a contest this summer for middle school educators to create a branching web comic about strong passwords: https://cybersavvyeducators.com/.

I think you've made a really clear and compelling case about why cybersecurity is an important part of learning for everyone. Exciting work! One question that comes to mind, especially as your approach asks teachers to develop their own curriculum, is how much content knowledge teachers need to teach middle grade cybersecurity lessons? Also, while this is still development phase, I'm curious what kinds of early indications of desired outcomes you are looking for from teachers and/or students?

I really appreciated your video, your project description, and reading the comments posted so far!  Really interesting work, and really exciting that you are engaging middle school teachers and students (and as a former middle school teacher, I know what a challenge that can be!).  I have to say, I have not given much thought as to the path that one takes to know and understand cybersecurity.  And certainly even simply raising awareness of teachers and students about the issues you noted above is important.  Are you currently working with local teachers in your region for the summer institute and pilot next year?  How are you imagining scaling up eventually?

As a passionate 29-year career educator interested in developing a K-12 cybersecurity educational program (and 14-year veteran middle school teacher), I would like to invite all of you to consider participating in the NICE K12 Cybersecurity Education Conference this coming December in Orange County (CA). 

I have been working arduously to bring cybersecurity into the secondary level (ms/hs) and have seen some progress in Utah, but the progress is all in the high school level. I believe a middle school (and elementary) cybersecurity program will help in numerous ways. First, it will train individuals to be more aware of the threats with online activity which is helpful since most incidents are caused by human error. Second, there are excellent cybersecurity careers available for individuals with diverse knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA); as Laurin mentioned, her background in music and art history are not listed anywhere in regards to KSA needed for cybersecurity, but this is why it is important for ALL students to have access to these types of problem solving activities. Finally, there is a projection of 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs by 2021 which will only be addressed if students get introduced to these career KSA early in their schooling; I believe the shortage is because it has been an uncommon, invisible career field with many positions filled by on-the-job training which will not be adequate as the threats grow in every area of our lives.

Kudos to the work that has been done and which will advance as time progresses. I hope to meet all of you at the conference aforementioned; I serve on the planning committee for the conference.

Very timely and exciting project.  So thankful for the STEM for All Showcase. What an excellent way to bring like minded (busy) researchers together. It is such a relief to hear the need for creativity and diversity in Cyber Security articulated so clearly!  Through lessons learned in the process of developing curriculum for High School, we see the need for more education in in earlier grades for students and for teachers. We are also keen on the idea of developing a program for adult learners. 

Glad to meet you virtually and would love to learn more about CyberMiSts and see if there are any opportunities for collaboration in the future.  We will be presenting a Cyber Sleuth Workshop for teachers at ISTE - is there any chance that you might be there?