Week 5 Reflection
This week I attended a virtual pro d day workshop. We did these workshops through focused ed.The intent was for me to attend 2 sessions but the first one did not allow me and my classmates to join. The second one worked and was quite informative. The title of the workshop was lessons in cybersecurity. During the zoom call the instructor took us through some resources that can be used in the classroom to teach students about cybersecurity. There were a variety of resources aimed at different ages with different delivery methods such as slides, videos or worksheets. There was some discussion around building strong passwords which I found interesting and after the zoom call I went to look at some resources provided through focused ed on passwords. The age range recommended for these resources was ages 8-11. I looked through the teacher guide which had information on how to build a strong password as well as statistics on how long it would take to hack certain password combinations. For students I think it is important to understand how to build strong passwords as around the ages of 8-11 they will likely be creating email accounts or school accounts requiring passwords and it is important that they use something that is secure but something that they will not forget. Another link that I looked into was the social media influence link for ages 12-14. I think it is super important to educate students on social media and the potential harms as well as how to protect yourself which I feel as if this resource did not do an overly great job of doing. Majority of the information provided was common sense. There was a link to slides that a teacher could show their students and one part of it included a game where the teacher would ask questions and the students would reply with a thumbs up or down if they agreed with the statement or not. This game seemed like a fine activity until I read the questions, the first question was “it is important to have a lot of likes and followers” there was no reasoning as to why that is not important and I feel as if students ages 12-14 would know that this is not important with how involved social media is in that age groups lives. The only thing I could see happening is students jokingly saying that likes and followers are important to impress their friends or get a laugh out of them. I think that some of the resources seemed a little bit outdated but the information is still very important. Overall I was disappointed the first zoom call did not work but the second one was informative and provided good resources.