Cyber Safeguarding Through Folklore: Engaging Elementary Students in Digital Citizenship Education

am I good all right Perfect all right so can everybody hear me all right perfect okay so welcome to my session if cyber safeguarding through full floor engaging elementary students in digital citizenship education okay big title what does that mean b basically um how to teach cyber security principles to Elementary age kids one of the key things to getting more people into cyber security is to start them young um I'm involved in a program called cyber Patriot where we focus on junior high and Elementary in fact we have some members here we have Kaitlyn and Ruby they're part of the Honda Cyber Al we also have the Coach Frank Hall here um and so they're going to help me out a

little bit through this presentation so with the um and you'll see them in little bit if you haven't gotten a piece of paper raise your hand so one of them can give you a piece of paper because you will need this all right so I'll get into how this idea came about and but first I do have to give you all a warning if you can already tell this is an interactive session so who am I I'm Dr J Dr Joiner um some people call me Dr Sparkles um I am a technical Mentor for the Honda Cyber Alis cyber Patriot team I'm also the director of education for the local group of women's Society of cyber jetsu

um they do have a talk today at 1300 in the University Center um so please feel free to check that out um I am very passionate about mentoring others and growing others um and also getting more people involved in cyber especially in the rural community so like all good fairy tales we're going to start Once Upon a Time right once upon a time they was a girl and she did she majored in education and later got a master's in education specifically music and she had a hard time getting into the Cyber industry and then once she got involved in the Cyber industry she started growing in that cyber community and then she started volunteering in the cyber community

giving back then one day a librarian at the local librarian that sponsors the Honda cyber Al approached her and asked hey would you be willing to lead an several cyber security fundamental classes during my spring break stem um camp and this girl said sure So there we are so then the girl was like how do I get elementary kids and Junior High kids interested in cyber security and teach them the fundamentals on an appropriate level to where they would understand and also be engaged and so here we go so I take my education background where I know that kids have multiple types of learning skills there's handson there's visuals there's audio right and there's a few others and then I combine

it with chat GPT first I have to train it to what I want because I also want to lesson plan that's adaptable to based on the kids that are in there I also want uh something that if I had a helper someone else could easily follow it so I wanted a script so that way they would know what to say so the first prompt is design a class with a lesson plan that is 1 hour and length because that was my length of time for that class right includes Hands-On activities that's very important for me is Hands-On activities um kids learn a lot easier with Hands-On activities um and engagement right and they don't fall asleep when you talk to

them either right so that's very important too all right so the subject is cyber security provide Hands-On EXA activities provide instructions supplies for the activity so I wanted it to list everything that I would need for this successful lesson plan it did an okay job didn't get me there yet so then I added okay for each activity include paragraphs that I should say and include how much time we should spend with each other objectively getting better for that lesson plan right all right so now it didn't give me all the hands on that I said so I said give me more Hands-On activities it gave me some Legos activities not quite where I was wanting

yet and then I said okay now modify this lesson and use the story of The Three Little Pigs to create an analogy of cyber security to elevant okay so do we know where we're headed yet so who are The Three Little Pigs anybody they're the good guys in the store their brothers too their brothers too and they built houses right who is the bad guy in the story now AKA our adversary the big bad W all right so now we're starting to shape up a lesson plan that kids in the elementary age can start to understand that there's a bad guy and there's a good guy just like in most fairy tales all right so now after some tweaking

after I got that I went and I tweaked it and added some of my things that I add and I entitled it a cyber owl Adventure meet the three pigs and I use the Cyber owl Adventure because the Cyber owl Patriot team right and so hopefully this would be a building opportunity for the library to rope in some more kids for cyber security and get them interested in that cyber Patriot team so I try to connect everything from a strategic level so I had my objective just like a good lesson plan does right so introduce elementary students to the exciting world of cyber security their interactive and Hands-On activities fostering an early interest in cyber

awareness by illustrating the importance of cyber security in a fun and relatable way using the story of The Three Little Pigs so one of the other outputs of this is I want teachers to be able to take my lesson plans that I develop and be able to use it in classroom so it has to beat some key elements from an educational perspective so my three activities included um the cyber security tail The Three Pigs and the big bag hacker creating super secret codes and who was afraid of a big bad wolf now I had a modify based on the people that were in that class um I didn't have 30 kids there that day so I couldn't really do

different break them up to role playing one person be a little picky and the other person being the big bad wolf like I wanted to but I had my daughter here Ruby be the big bad wolf and she will get to be the Big B wolf again for y'all in a little bit so y'all get to see how that goes so this is where the class interaction starts so if you haven't already um gotten one of these piece of papers hold up your hand you will need a PIN um so we are going to give you a piece of paper and I'm you to walk you through basically what these activities were so y'all can get an idea of what

this is

like all right does everybody have a piece of paper all right so it's a pig so the first activity that I walked the kids through is I need a volunteer to tell me the story and their own words of The Three Little Pigs who would like to tell me that story anybody nobody wants to tell me the story of The Three Little Pigs you do okay tell me the story of The Three Little Pigs um The Three Little Pigs built a house at straw okay and then the pig was like I want eat you or the the wolf was um the wolf was like I'm gonna eat you so he blew the house down and then

they went and made a a one out of sticks and then the same thing happened and then bricks and that didn't happen and then the wolf Was Defeated okay but there was something else in that story that's key that will affect our other yes Ruby what else happened in the the wolf did not give up after the first try so he so he went to the roof and they boiled some water and the the Rope the wolf fell down and he got right cuz he tried to climb down the chi so hooked him and eat him right okay and then he ran away right depending which story you're talking about yes so who's the good guys in this story The wolfes the

wolf is in yes too he just wanted F all right who's the good guys the pigs right and so who's the bad guy the wolf the pigs and so did the wolf ever give up nope not until the end right and so just like our cyber attackers the wolf acted and kept trying and trying and trying until there finally was a defense mechanism all right so that was Activity one activity two you're going to need your piece of paper um so before I had them do activity two I actually had them take a piece of paper and based on the story of The Three Little Pigs I want you to draw me a house that you think would be secure

you can add all the defenses that you want you can have a guard dog you can have laser beams you can have DNA code analysis draw me a house on one of your sheets of paper because we're going to get to that in a minute but first I need you to draw me in house I did warn yall that this is an interactive

[Music]

[Music] lesson all right how's everybody's house strong going

F all right you a few

more all right for those who just walked in we are drawing a house with as many levels of security as you want you can have a cow you can have a dog you can have a fence you can have lasers you can have sharks you can have

crocodiles a big

looks like it looks like most of Y done that house so now we're going to put on some more creative mind thinking on the back of that paper um we're going to do some secret super secret codes right so I want you to think of a super secret code that is only known to you you won't give out to anybody and this is going to be your password several of youall may have online accounts that y'all need a password for so we're going to walk you through those steps of how to create a safe password that you don't tell anybody but then I do tell them that it's okay to tell their parents right um

because that way we're safe online and it's good for parents to have your passwords all right so we're going to keep them safe so then we walk them through depending on their age what a good password is the older they are the more complex I can make that password for them and give them all those top secret super you know password complexity requirements that we give them in an industry like 16 characters plus a l special digit but at the elementary age we got to break them down a little bit simpler because they won't be able to remember as well as some of the older kids in junior high in high school so we got to start with something

that they knows so I say hey if you like sunflowers make your password about sunflowers give it a phrase like I love sunflowers or I eat sunflower seeds but try to put a capital letter and so then I show them on the keyboard what a capital letter is and I was like if you can put a special symbol like an exclamation point or a dollar sign or something in there that will help make that password a little bit safer I'm making my cool okay and then I tell them don't give this password out to anybody but your parents so at this time go ahead and make your super secret password on the back of that paper that you drew a house

on [Music]

[Music] all right everybody have time to make their super secret password yes all right so now now we're going to do some role playing activities so meet the big bad wolf I have two wolf volunteers they're going to come around and they're going to try to steal your password through something called social engineering yes it's up to you to give them give it to them or not you can give it to us we're trustworthy all right so wols please go tell me how what you're able to

get and a larger group you might want to make partas activity you have one

[Music] one sorry

no

wanted to go to

the oh [Music] [Music]

[Music] wow that sounds did youall get yet you got I all right now come sit down all right all right so even as social engineering um I did get several of the kids passwords during this session and then um when we talked about it I was like well why did you give me the password and they're like CU she gave me candy I was like yeah but now now I know your password to your computer and I know your email I got the passord right here and I know this about you and now I can seal your information and the kid was like oh are you going to steal my information and I was like no I won't

seal your information yes I will and so after after we talked about that with one kid then I had the wolf go back and tried social engineering with the other kids and do you all think F gave out the passwords that time yes did no they did not the second time okay so they learned right through that engagement activity they learned and so for the older kids I showed them some examples of what spear fishing might look like I gave them some emails and the PowerPoint presentation and I showed them hey this is a guy from claiming to be from the bank this is a guy claiming to be from Best Buy because my computer

apparently is broken onv right and he wants to charge me for some work that did that I didn't authorize right and so we walked through those stuffs and then some of the older kids because they had social media I gave them some examples from LinkedIn some examples from Facebook and I talked about how um in Facebook you'll see a lot of people posting in groups saying hey I have some three cats or I have this right and people want to click on that and then that's how they steal their information right so they send out links or I know one of the big ones right now is hey I have some work from home jobs right now

click on this Google link and apply we know as adults as educated adults most job companies are going to use Google Sheets to apply for a job it's going to be through a different website normally the company website or like USA jobs or clear jobs or something like that that's legit um so we walk them through examples like that so that way they got away from the day and then knew knew what to look at when they looked at different things on social media and on their email so now we have a bonus round so remember that house that I had y'all draw so the last thing I had the elementary kids do is show me their

houses and then we talked about defense and death and we talked about how the bad guy could get past their def in so if I had a dog how many of y'all had dogs on your all right so I'm a bad guy I'm going to throw out a piece of steak and now that dog is distracted and I can go on to the next level of security how many of yall had fences all right all I have to do is bring my wire cutter so now I can cut through that why if you have lava around it lava I just build a bridge and go over it that so s lava other yes but these bad guys never give up so who else

had something else what did they have yes so my house is underwater and it's protected by orcas okay I have scuba gear I'm going to go scuba div but the orcas I some fish they're hungry they're the kind that only like millionary Yachts millionary yach well there's a way there's a will all right who else had something over here anybody else had something yes up top I have a decoy house a decoy house no I like it all my hous but just like any bad guys right they go and they go to that Decoy and they eventually find out that it's a decoy and then they do some more investigation or intelligence or research and they find out where the

real house is I made M all of say but really they really bad inside the bo trap and if you get one question wrong you get canceled on all social platforms that's what research is for all right so what else have we got over here yes and a hunting trap room where as soon as you go in you couldn't leave oh oh that's a good one yeah maybe that's where you bring two thieves two bad that way one gets caught and the other one work from the outside and get them out yes all right a snake ate my house a snake ate your house well I have a knife and I can cut open that snake oh

wow right who else my house has wheels on it so I just drove it away just like I have a fast and furious car so I'm going to go and have a group of theves and I'm going to be in my fast and furious car and we'll align it so I can get into it so isn't that just exactly like our bad guys in the in the cyber community we close one vulnerability and they find another one right we we give updated hardware and then they do Supply injects right we do everything remotely and do layers of encryption and then they get our encryption keys so we're constantly fighting our bad guys we're finally always you know Finding ways to go

against the bad guys they're finding ways to get it after our defenses and then we have to find ways to make it even more secure and then adds money right all right so we talked about that and so then they understood the defense and Death at a very Elementary level all right so why fairy TS why did I get stuck from Fairy TS well fairy tales go back thousands of years so I didn't really have to worry about copyright because they were open to public domain right so that made it a little bit easy um and so there's some key items about copyright if it becomes public domain if it's published before 1923 in general um if the author died

over 70 years ago and or if it's Anonymous author for over 120 years um and so I really wanted something that the kids would be familiar with so I could get their engagement with right and so if I did like a more cyber traditional story and just talked about defense in depth I would lose them yeah but if I related it to something like they knew like the three little pigs and they each had their layer of Defense now I could tie it into something they knew With A New Concept so that way it helps layer that understanding from an elementary mind child so I do have a copy of the completed lesson plan that we went

through today if anybody is interested in seeing that um I'll pass it around over here um it's supposed to go one hour in length and of course it really just depends yeah absolutely it Al it really just depends on how many kids you have in that environment and where they're at so you have to learn how to adapt to those kids some of them may be more Hands-On some of them really just want to hear the story and they'll get more out just listening um and so that's why I have different activities in this Lon PL um I do plan to make more lesson plans based off the fairy tale and then eventually as they kick off my goal is to publish

some of these to make it accessible to teachers in the community because if you think about our education right especially in the rural communities a lot of these teachers they don't know what cyber is or maybe they took a computer class and college and they became the computer teacher right or they became the computer science teachers so they're really learning as they go so that's why our local um region education 20 is always having workshops for them to learn and get educated right um cyber as all of you all know it's not one time you get a degree or one time you get a certification and you're done it's a field that you have to constantly learn

you have to constantly research and constantly grow because if not you'll never get ahead of the alary right and we don't want to play wack and all the time and we don't want our databas is compromise so are there any questions at this time yes so one thing that I okay so hi my name is Elma and I am a recovering classroom teacher and I now work in cyber security awesome and I came to this talk I wanted to see like what's going on in education guys right and I don't know if you've thought about the pedagogical impact of this type of lesson using fairy tales because on a psychological standpoint you know thinking about the social this social

engineering side these fairy tales have archetypes that speak across ages and across cultures as to like the bad the image of like you know think of the tarot or think of any type of mythological story you can look at any mythology that also would not be copyrighted right and you can see like the bad thing person entity someone who's malicious who's trying to trick you the trickster so there's there's like a really also on a psychological um level this is a really powerful and impactful way to teach cyber security to not only young people I also think adults can take a lot of this like even people in the company you know teach your kids about cyber

security safety this is something that parents can do with their kids and I just wanted to add that and thank you for giving this talk and I'm glad that they accepted it because I think it's important that we talk about education in cyber because we can get really really technical about things but we have to work with people right so the education is is important thank you and it also teaches some this information social engineering right um yes up here I have a thank you too I think you're filling a gap um there's not much um education that I've seen especially with like home school curriculum Public School curriculum um regarding cyber unless it's in like high school middle school

um so I like that you're trying to reach younger kids in this early my so not to take it to a dark place but with the um you know sex trafficking and human trafficking and social engineering part of that um I think it's really critically important that we teach younger kids about this kids starting young about the social engineering aspect so thank you for start at 4:00 I give my all right any other questions all right well um what else do I have that's it so we have a make met Frank he is talking later on today he is the H wild cyber Patriot team uh coach and he also does some other things the

women's Society of cyberjutsu is speaking at 1300 Susan right here is on the discussion panel and Hollis over here is leading that discussion Chanel um so we'll be over at the University Center you'll see a lot of us with uh either the shirt or we'll have like a red Mandana on so that's how you'll be able to recognize it and we also have a community table out front by registration so I'll be here yes you have any question are you all recording that because I'm speaking at the same time here so I wna I want to definitely hear your your presentation yeah I think that would be a b slides question all right yeah so all right so I am

available for any questions so thank you all so much for coming um I look forward to meeting y'all and interacting