The last few years have seen a huge expansion in the number and types of cyber security courses in high schools. Much of this has been driven by a growth in the realization that we, society, governments, businesses, need more help making our systems secure from bad actors. CS ed as career development. Great in career technical schools of course. Yet another CS elective in comprehensive schools as well. Pretty easy to sell to school boards and administrations.
The CollegBoard has jumped on the bandwagon with AP Career Kickstart Cybersecurity Pilots. I did take a look through that program. To me, the first course looks a lot like a standard IT/Networking course. I guess that makes sense as a prerequisite. After all,step one of a secure network is setting up a network.
The second course looks a lot more like what I think about as cybersecurity. Could be a good course. I hope that some of the pilot teachers will share what they learn while teaching it.
I don’t know that all courses calling themselves cybersecurity are that deep though. From what I have seen, some courses that call themselves cybersecurity are mostly about staying safe on the internet. That’s not a bad thing as long as proper expectations are set.
One related topic I have been thinking about is writing secure code. Is there room for that in high school? On the other hand, are we doing students a disservice by not talking about it at all? That’s the area of cybersecurity I hope to spend some more time thinking about. I’m more of a coder than a network guy.
1 comment:
Can't really tell much about the courses from the College Board descriptions. Much like APCSP - could be garbage, could be a strong implementation - I've seen both with more of the former than the latter.
Cybersecurity though can mean so many things and there are so many obstacles that make it especially challenging at the high school level.
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