CyberTitan camp aims to teach P.E.I. students digital literacy and cybersecurity
Students from Grade 6 up get to build a computer while learning safe online habits
The P.E.I. IT Alliance is running a youth cybersecurity program for students from Grade 6 right up to Grade 12.
The weeklong CyberTitan camp lets students build a computer to understand the inner workings of it, as well as learn safer online habits.
Camp organizer Tim King said students he has taught in the past have gone pretty far with the skills they learned.
"I've had students who got into CyberTitan with me when it first started in 2018 who have since gone to university," he told CBC's Mio Adilman during an interview on Mainstreet. "One of them is doing IOT [internet of things] research at the University of Waterloo in their post-graduate program in cybersecurity."
King said other students have gone into engineering, and one who went into biology said the program had helped him in an unexpected way.
"I said, 'Was it ever helpful?' and he said, 'All through university I never had to pay for anything, because I was like the campus IT guy, and I would just help people get their computers running.'"
'Myth' about digital natives
King said the CyberTitan camp helps students more deeply understand the digital world in a way that just using a device can't.
"There was a myth that came out a few years ago about digital natives, and how students of a certain age just magically know how computers work, and it's not true," he said.
"The kids are really familiar with digital, are really comfortable in the media and maybe they're really quick on TikTok or whatever they're into, but if you moved them away from that familiarity, they're immediately as lost as any senior or anybody else."
King said familiarity is what makes people think they're naturally good with tech.
"When you get back to the fundamentals, like what we're doing this week in Charlottetown, it really sheds a light on what we need to do to build up that digital literacy."
He said doing physical computations and going off the screen can be rewarding.
"If you take it off the screen and you make it tangible for students, it really makes all the difference."
King said that many people don't know where to begin when it comes to computers.
"In a lot of cases, people will break into a system by interrupting the startup sequence of a computer, so if you don't understand the startup sequence, you don't even know where to begin," he said.
"If you understand how a computer boots, and how it goes through BIOS [Basic Input/Output System] and into the operating system — once you understand that, it's like you understand the landscape that you're dealing with."
It also allows them to take control of the machine, so instead of just approaching it as a consumer, the students are approaching it more like a technician.— Tim King
King said this can make people look at computers from another perspective.
"It also allows them to take control of the machine, so instead of just approaching it as a consumer, the students are approaching it more like a technician and they see the machine as something that they understand how it operates, and they understand how to tune it to get the best out of it."
A digital divide
King said there is a sort of "digital divide," referring to people who use tech but don't actually own a bona fide computer.
"There are a lot of students here telling me they don't actually have a computer at home. So maybe they have a smart phone and maybe they have two PlayStations, but they don't have a computer," he said.
"For me, a big part of this is if we can get people thinking about technology as a productivity tool instead of just a toy. In Canada, almost everybody has a digital something, but when my students come into class, they'll tell me, 'I've had a string of PlayStations, or Xboxes, or whatever and maybe a string of iPhones but that's it.'"
King said that parents have been part of the curriculum development, and those of new students are made aware of what is being taught.
"What they'll get at the end of the week is a student coming home with some genuine digital literacy, instead of familiarity with a game system."
Cybersecurity landscape is evolving
As for the cybersecurity aspect of the program, King said the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years is changing the parameters of online safety.
"The people doing cyberattacks are not hackers; they're criminals who have purchased a system and they are basically running it without any knowledge of what it's doing," he said.
"It used to be that you would have a hacker and they would go after a specific target, but these systems don't do that. They blitz the Internet looking for openings, which is why you hear terrible stories about children's hospitals being hacked. That's not with intention, that's just an AI finding any opening it can get."
King said we're facing a "deluge of cyberattacks that are all automated." In return, the defence is catching up and also trying to automate. That means that the best human brains will be needed to tackle the problem in the years to come — and maybe some of those brains will have come through a program like CyberTitan.
In the meantime, he said parents should not leave it to someone else to tell their kids how to stay safe online. He remembers a friend telling him, "You don't step away, you double down," when it comes to children and computers.
"As the student becomes more fluent themselves, then you can start to step away, but don't assume it. Don't assume the students have digital fluency, because they don't."
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With files from Mainstreet P.E.I.