Responses to the initial questions associated with Cyber Security & Awareness – Primary Years (2020) Cyber Security & Awareness (CSER MOOC)

At this point in your professional learning, why do you think students should learn about Cyber Security?

It feels like a lot of time is spent discussing how technology works to achieve creative, constructive and cognitive outcomes. The issue with this approach is that it can overlook the critical implications of such decisions. For example, look at the recent discovery in regards to TikTok about having access to clipboard. I take this framing from Doug Belshaw’s work on The Eight Essential Elements of Digital Literacies.

If you were to teach a lesson or unit about Cyber Security to your students, what topics and/or activities do you think would be important to cover?

If I were to teach a unit, I would focus on the difference between privacy and security. I would also focus on finding the everyday implications, such as passwords, cookies and data.

If you have previously taught about Cyber Security, is there anything you would like to share about topics and/or activities you have covered or any resources and tools you used? We would love to consider these for an update.

I used the Digital Licenses in the past when it focused on Year 6. However, the problem I had with this is that although students got the right answer, they did not necessarily translate into understandings that were picked up elsewhere in their learning.