Students will weigh the advantages of cybersecurity in protecting individuals and systems against potential disadvantages of the over-restriction of content and delivery.Students will communicate, verbally and in writing, the advantages or disadvantages of cybersecurity.

Get a Job! Students will use their persuasive messaging skills to research and promote various computer science fields in the unit.

This performance task is designed for third grade and up to teach the importance of using strong passwords.  This would be helpful to use at the beginning of the year to review password safety with upper elementary school students to refresh their memory.  This includes an instructional slide show and a student handout.

With digitization, we see biosecurity, cybersecurity, and physical security begin to overlap. This overlap started a new discipline, cyberbiosecurity. This resource is part of the Agricultural Cyberbiosecurity Education Resource Collection that contains resources for formal and non-formal agricultural educators working with middle school aged youth. Published as Open Educational Resources, all resources are provided in durable (pdf) and customizable (MS Word) formats. They are hosted on  GoOpenVA in a unique resource collection, Ag Cybersecurity Virginia Tech, at https://goopenva.org/curated-collections/143 and on on Virginia Tech’s stable repository, VTechWorks at https://doi.org/10.21061/cyberbiosecurity

This cipher was invented for the Hebrew alphabet, but it can work with any alphabet.  Many people believe it was used in the Bible and is older than Hieroglyphics! It was later adopted by other cultures, such as the Greeks and Romans, and used to encode messages in their respective languages. This lesson leads students the basics of cryptography.

This is an unplugged worksheet activity to walk students through the process of building strong, easy to remember, passwords.

This slideshow will help students to identify and use strong passwords, and explain why strong passwords should be used (e.g., protect name, address, and telephone number). It walks students through a process that can be used to create strong, easy to remember, passwords.

This is game designed on Baamboozle.com that is based on the Computer Science standard 7.6 in Cybersecurity where users must answer questions to distinguish the difference between a physical and a digital security measures.

These printable CS Discussion Cards use Essential Questions from the CS SOL Curriculum Framework.

This is a PowerPoint based on the Computer Science standard 2.9 that reminds students of the rules of using computers appropriately at schoolThis is a PowerPoint based on the Computer Science standard 2.9 that reminds students of the rules of using computers appropriately at schoolThis is a PowerPoint based on the Computer Science standard 2.9 that reminds students of the rules of using computers appropriately at schoolThis is a PowerPoint based on the Computer Science standard 2.9 that reminds students of the rules of using computers appropriately at schoolThis is a PowerPoint based on the Computer Science standard 2.9 that reminds students of the rules of using computers appropriately at schoolThis is a PowerPoint presentation that is based on the Computer Science standard in Cybersecurity, SOL C.S. 2.9 where students will be reminded of the rules of how to use and handle their computers safely and responsibly. 

This is a crossword puzzle that is comprised of the essential vocabulary from the Computer Science SOL 8.7 in Cybersecurity. It was made at Flippity.net. 

These Pocket Guides are a quick summary of each of the 6 computer science strands for grades K-8. The pocket guides explain what the strand is about and how it increases in complexity from Kindergarten to 8th grade.

This unplugged lesson will allow students to encrypt and decrypt message using the Caesar Cipher letter shift method of encryption. Cover the process of how this method works by doing an example and explaining the process of shifting the plaintext by the letter shift value to create the encrypted cipher text.

This lesson is designed to teach students basic encryption using the Caesar cipher method. This is a simple letter shift cipher that takes a plaintext message and encrypts it into cipher text by shifting each letter of the message by a value between 1 and 25 (1 less than the total number of letters in the English alphabet). This technique was used by Julius Caesar to encrypt messages by shifting each letter of the message by 3 letters. The message would be decrypted by taking each letter and shifting back 3 letters to reveal the plaintext message.

Students will examine the history and culture of the Choctaw Native Americans, as well as the story of the Code Talkers in WW1, in order to memorialize one of the Choctaw Code Talkers. 

The student or class will watch a video clip about spies and secret codes from the past.  Next students will be able to use a Pigpen cipher to crack a secret message of their own.  Teachers can edit the message to fit their needs and make adjustments as desired.  This is one mini lesson out of a series of five.

The student or class will watch a video clip about how to decode a Vigenère Square Cipher.Next students will be able to use the cipher to crack a secret message of their own (teacher provided messages in a hat (not inlcuded)).  One student chooses the word or phrase, the teacher puts the key (word) on the board, that same student will encrypt the message and send it to their partner.  The partner with use the same key word to return the text to plain text revealing the message and send their guess back to their partner. Teachers can edit the message to fit their needs and make adjustments as desired.  This is one mini lesson out of a series of five (part 2) and can be used alone, or with other lessons in the series. Vigenère Square Ciphefrom the past.  Next students will be able to use a Pigpen cipher to crack a secret message of their own.  Teachers can edit the message to fit their needs and make adjustments as desired.  This is one mini lesson out of a series of five. Vigenère Square Ciphe

The student or class will watch a video clip about ciphers, specifically Caesar Ciphers.  Next students will learn more about encryption and decryption through the use of "keys".  Lastly, students will be introduced to the career path choices as a Cyber-security analyst. This is one lesson out of a series of five, and can be used alone, or with the some or all of the other four lessons.

This breakout activity provides teachers and students an interactive way to demonstrate their learning about cryptography, code-breaking, and historic ciphers. Clues are provided, along with additional hints you can choose to provide to students so that students solve ciphers and learn what time their army is planning to raid the enemy camp.