CybHER refocuses outreach to K-8
September 10, 2024
For over 10 years, CybHER® at Dakota State University has offered outreach programs for all ages, with a focus on middle and high school students. Now, expanding on this vision, CybHER is increasing its efforts to reach K-8 students, understanding that impactful early education can significantly shape the next generation of cybersecurity leaders.
This summer, CybHER worked with the Sioux Falls Community Learning Center, which is made up of about 26 schools and all the Sioux Falls school districts, to provide cyber activities to K-5 students.
After a pilot program with 4th grade girls and 2nd grade boys last year, they are expanding to include free afterschool STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) program for all K-8 students in Madison.
"Early exposure to cybersecurity in the K-8 years is critical because it helps students develop foundational skills and sparks curiosity before they reach pivotal educational and career decisions. By engaging students at a young age, we can develop a generation that is not only fluent in technology but also prepared to defend and innovate in an increasingly digital world," said Dr. Ashley Podhradsky, CybHER Co-Founder and Vice President of Research and Economic Development, Dakota State University.
Mikaila Fluth, a sophomore computer science and cyber operations major and student employee with CybHER, helped start an afterschool program last year with two groups from Madison: fourth-grade girls and second-grade boys. The boys’ group started out with Lego robots, and the girls learned soldering and coding.
“Mikaila is so engaging and invested in making the lessons fun for these kids,” said Kanthi Narukonda, director of the CybHER Institute and assistant professor in The Beacom College of Computer & Cyber Sciences. “That’s a wonderful quality for a CybHER leader and an educator in general. She has taken on this role and made it her own.”
This year, every grade level will get to come to DSU twice a month for a variety of educational STEM activities, such as crypto puzzles, programming, and more. “I was so excited to hear that we get to work with K-8 students this year,” Fluth said.
Last year, Fluth received help from Lori Engbretson, retention specialist and instructor, to organize and coordinate activities. They worked together to determine how to introduce topics like cryptography, soldering, and block coding to different age groups, using easy-to-understand instructions to explain the concepts.
For example, coding can be described with an analogy of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The instructor can’t simply tell the student to put peanut butter on bread, or they will just set a jar of peanut butter on top of the loaf of bread.
“When you program, you literally need to describe all of the steps,” Engebretson said, so they work to develop instructions that make sense to the students while engaging and exciting them about topic.
Also helping with this year’s expanded K-8 model is Dr. Fenecia Homan, dean of the Governors Cyber Academy and K-12 Initiatives. She sees this as an opportunity to help DSU preservice teachers become comfortable with computer science standards for the state. Preservice teachers can help the CybHER students teach lessons or serve as student leaders for additional experience.
“We want our education leaders to be cutting-edge leaders of technology in the education field,” she explained, and participating in the outreach will give preservice teachers the chance to become comfortable incorporating cyber concepts into their teaching and find ideas for weaving cyber content into their lessons.