Trailblazers from CyberFirst 

We were lucky to have been able to invite CyberFirst into school to do some creative cyber work with some of our Year 7 students.  Launched in May 2016, and inspired and led by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a part of GCHQ, CyberFirst began as a programme of opportunities helping young people explore their passion for tech by introducing them to the work of cyber security.  

Students were introduced to what Cyber means and what new and emerging tech we are being informed about and exposed to in the real world.  Students were then given a website that they had to edit.  Students learnt how to read and edit the HTML code that allows us to build websites.  Students could change the text, the formatting of the text and add their own images onto the website.  Students were also immersed into the world of being a "Digital Detective", where a leaked document allowed them to find patient zero in an outbreak of a new disease.  The data was meant to keep all entries anonymous, however our Year 7 Digital Detectives used every day online tools and websites to find patient zero and answer lots of personal questions about this person.  In the final part of the session students created a stop-go animation for an advert for a local business.  Students assigned themselves roles as either the Director, Illustrator or Animator.

All students had a brilliant day learning and exploring about Cyber, with some brilliant quotes from our amazing Year 7 students:

"I enjoyed the digital detective task as it was fun and challenging at the same time!"  Poppy

"I loved the stop motion because it was extremely fun and I learnt a lot from it.  I would definitely recommend Cyber Explorers to others.  It was really good and the staff were kind and helpful and supported us with any mistakes we made."  Izzy

"I sometimes find computing hard, but today I have learnt if you put your mind to it, you can do anything!  I pretty much liked all of the day!" Isabelle

"Learning about Cyber today was really fun.  I recommend trying it out.  I also really enjoyed learning about HTML." Tiarna

"It was really good fun and recommend Cyber Explorers to everyone!"  Luca