The Problem Being Addressed

The majority of the younger generation using the internet remains oblivious to the online risks. For the younger generation, often referred to as “digital natives,” the online world is second nature. They are the first generation to grow up with easy access to the internet, and while this digital proficiency offers numerous advantages, it also presents significant challenges. One alarming concern is that the majority of the younger generation using the internet remains oblivious to the online risks. This is a problem that should have been addressed awhile ago but I do not think that many people think of this being such a problem even though you see all of these different scenarios and cases of bad types of things happening to the younger generation online.

How to know this is a problem

Young children are targeted with social engineering, as the human aspect is the weakest link in the chain of cybersecurity. Knowing this is a problem is very important and obvious because even young children are not just the main targets or humans falling for cyber attacks or bad things happening to them. There are also grown adults that have something within this aspect happen to them every other day even with them knowing some information about cybersecurity. You know this is a problem when certain things occur, for example this could be changes in behavior, secrecy, decline in academic performance, and use of unfamiliar apps or platforms. There are minor cyber threats that occur to children on a daily basis and within this causing many problems as explained above. 

You also will know this is a problem and has been a problem when you see people even at an older age still falling to cyber attacks or cyber threats just because they were never taught the right thing at a young age. This is why this needs to be addressed and focused on more than ever with technology growing and growing more everyday. Technology will never stop and we need to be prepared for this.

Solution To The Problem

To make learning both engaging and effective, we plan to leverage the power of gamification through Digital Game-Based Learning (DGBL), a well-established strategy that harnesses the educational potential of play.We are going to develop a public education strategy aimed at imparting essential knowledge to elementary students and beyond. Within us doing this, we will be looking at many different ways that we can make this impact in a positive way and a very learningful way for the younger generation. We are mostly focused on how to do this for elementary school kids from the grades of Pre-K to Fifth grade. The knowledge that they will gain from the way we are going to teach and implement this in the classroom will give them all of the knowledge and basic skills that they need to be safe through the internet. As we know kids that are very young have access to devices that are linked to the internet and then next thing you know something bad occurs from them not knowing not to.

This is not their fault at all for not knowing these things, but this is why now we are going to step up to make that change and make sure that they do know the right information. Most of it is just having the lack of awareness which is why education comes into play for them to know. Within findings of research it shows that students in elementary school and high school all have a lack of emphasis on cyber security in the school curriculum. Within focusing on elementary schools this is good because emphasizing this at a young age is better than an older age. Some may ask why, well the reasoning is because learning this young already makes you have a deeper understanding of the topic and understand the bits and pieces that will one day make up for the big parts as you grow older.

Barriers That Are Expected To Be Confront

School bureaucracy not allowing funding for our cybersecurity resources. Within this idea there is a chance that there is going to be a battle with schools not trying to allow funding for the resources that we need for this cybersecurity content to be taught. This could be because some schools cannot afford it or just because they do not think it is worth adding into their curriculum of being taught. We could also run into the problem with certain parents not wanting this to happen which is a very common thing to happen now. This is why we will persuade them and educate them as well to show them why this is so important to have.

Another huge barrier that we could end up running into would be the lessons and material staying current as threats are constantly changing very rapidly. We have already thought about how this would work. Within this curriculum knowing that new cybersecurity vulnerabilities or just cybersecurity in general can be changing a lot just means we have to know what information to update and what to not. There will always be the basic information that all of the kids need to know to just learn what cybersecurity is, but there is some information that will need to be updated. For grades pre-k to second grade, the material should stay the same and just the basic knowledge and information for them to learn so they will understand it. When we start looking at third grade to fifth grade, this is when it can get interesting.

The reason I say that this can get interesting is because then we need to figure out which information should change for them and how in-depth that we should get for them to still be able to learn it at the age that they are at. You cannot go in depth with information at that age just because they might not pick it up or want to learn bigger words at that age. This is why then the next barrier that we could face is creating a game that is both fun and educational at the same time. Within this game that will be created it cannot just be educational because kids will not even want to actually learn the information being displayed. This has to also be fun at the same time for them to enjoy learning the information and also wanting to keep playing the game so they learn more and more day by day. 

As I was a kid before, I remember what I would like to play and not play that was educational. You have to grab their attention in order to be successful at this but also have that balance of information. Some games could be an escape room or even an example could be a teddy bear that is locked up and to get him unlocked you have to complete certain levels/barriers to get to him knowing the information about cybersecurity that you need to know.

How will you know if you are successful (assessment)

One main way that we will know if we are successful would be if other schools start to adopt the curriculum after it has already been at another school. That shows that it is making a positive impact on the kids and giving them knowledge that is actually useful to have in the world. If other schools were not to start to adopt this in their curriculum then we would have to see why not and maybe what changes to make within this curriculum for it to make that positive impact on them. This could turn out to be just certain county’s within a state or this could turn out to be a nationwide curriculum that could be installed into almost every school depending on a lot of factors of course. The goal is for this to be adopted into as many schools as possible but this will take time.

One other way to know if we are successful is by performing a group study on several schools to measure learning outcomes. This would show us if the games that we have created are actually being beneficial or not. It also just shows us if they understand certain concepts and the ones that they don’t. This would get a lot of information that would benefit us greatly.