Cyber Schools Hubs Newsletter January 2019

Digital Cyber and Immersive Labs

Immersive Labs in their support for the project provide free access for project schools to their online Digital Cyber Academy. Originally aimed at universities and companies this platform provides a great on-line learning environment in addition to a space for competition between schools and students as their learning earns points. As of writing this article, the current ranking for our schools is pretty impressive when you realise some of the UK and overseas universities who are also using this platform. The score is not as important as the learning it provides, and it is great to see the spoke schools in addition to the Hub schools taking up this opportunity. (A warm welcome to our newest spoke school to join the project). Quite a few of our schools are using this as a platform to support the Cyber Clubs they are running, while students can also access the platform in their own time (either at school or at home). Nice to see our top 3 schools getting higher scores than the US Military Academy and Imperial College London....

• 19 - Berkeley Green UTC • 26 - • 54 - Wyedean • 96 - Ribston Hall • 127 - • 290 - • 357 - Beaufort Co-operative Academy • 361 - Community School • 506 - The Dean Academy

Interestingly Ribston Hall has rolled the Digital Cyber Academy out across both Y11 and Y13 computer science classes and within a subset of Y12. 21 students are now signed up with varying levels of activity. Ribston is undertaking the analysis and alignment to GCSE and A-Level specifications and has already identified aligned activities for Phishing, Malware and Shoulder surfing. Ribston used the sql injection activity in lesson, with year 11s, linked to the systems security unit of work.

Cleeve's high score is a tribute to the weekly hack club that is now being run, some dedicated students (who already have the hacker T-shirts) being supported not only by two teachers from the Computer Science Department but by the new maths teacher who has recently come on board.

IRM & Sofia, an 'inspirational female' visits Wyedean

Sophia Mcall, who is currently on her work placement year at IRM Security in Cheltenham, visited as part of the Inspirational Female Programme that the project runs. Sophia who is studying Cyber Security at Bournemouth University, is a a student ambassador for Cyber Security Challenge UK, and also represented Team UK in the European Cyber Championships in 2017 and 2018. Sophia also entered the Cyber Security Challenge UK's 2017 Masterclass and was awarded the Judy Baker Award: The Best Newcomer to Cyber Security. Sophia was first recommended to NCSC for the Inspirational Female Programme when she was still at university, having written a blog about getting more Females into Cyber (see https://cyberworld.news/opinion-analysis/future-leaders/women-cyber-security/). The students at Wyedean found the topics covered by Sophia during her talk, such as social engineering, ethical hacking and

why Cyber Security is important, extremely enlightening and were also very impressed in hearing about the various competitions that Sofia had been involved in. Sofia has now joined Madeline from CSA on the Wyedean 'Women in Cyber' board, to remind the female students what is possible for them to achieve.

Deep3 Director @ Beaufort

Richard Yorke, one of the Directors of Deep3, visited Beaufort school to provide a motivational and inspiring career talk to the students. Beaufort is reaching out to industry supporters to help with motivating and inspiring students to help widen and expand their knowledge of what is possible for them to achieve. Beaufort admits that some of the students never leave their post code and unfortunately due to family circumstances are not exposed to what careers are out there for them to work towards, and that the project's industry supporters can really make a difference to the students.

Wyedean to Cynam

6th Form students and teachers from Wyedean were invited to visit the Cynam event 'The evolving role of the CISO', held at the Jurys Inn in Cheltenham. Students got to hear an interesting discussion chaired by Buck Rogers, CISO of the Bank of (one of the projects keenest supporters), on Computer Security and the role a company’s CISO plays. Feedback from the students and teachers was varied on this experience, but they all get to see and hear what real CISO's thought (from the CISO for Heathrow Airport to the ex CISO for HP) and experience this aspect of the industry for real. The next Cynam event promises to be interesting with a focus on Cyber Crime, Past, Present and Future threats, and will be held on 21st March at the Jurys Inn again. If any schools are interested in attending, please get in contact with the NCSC team and we will see if we can acquire some tickets (transport costs will also be covered).

Cyber Day at Denmark Road and Beaufort

Both Denmark Road and Beaufort schools have recently hosted Cyber Days. This concept was pioneered by Denmark Road, where industry comes into the school and runs a base with an activity for the day. The students then rotate around all the different bases and companies, getting a fantastic 'speed dating' experience of Computer Science and Cyber. Denmark Road have aimed this day at year 8's in an effort to highlight how interesting and exciting Computer Science can be, to promote Computer Science as a GCSE, while Beaufort picked the top 50 science and maths students looking to interest them in GCSE Computer Science. These days have been supported by the likes of CSA, Deep3, CGI, Ohbot, SWRCCU, Raytheon, EDF, National Grid and Lockheed Martin. Wyedean has already registered an interest in doing something similar. If other schools are interested please get in touch, likewise if other industry supporters are interested in supporting these events more support is always welcome, especially with the larger schools.

Wyedean visit FUJITSU SOC

Thanks to some engagement through the UTC industry partnership scheme, NCSC were able to facilitate FUJITSU coming on board as an industry supporter. The first activity that FUJITSU offered was a visit to their Security Operations Centre (SOC) in Warrington, with Wyedean first to take up the opportunity (Cleeve is currently working on taking the second opportunity to visit the SOC). FUJITSU put on an excellent and informative day for the Wyedean students, who were impressed with the number of female employees who take leading roles in the SOC, while also learning about what the FUJITSU SOC does, and also having fun playing with the expensive glass walls (now you see me, now you don't). The students feedback on the whole event, showed that it was worth the long coach trip up to Warrington for the experience.

CSA support Beaufort with Pi's and a Director

CSA visited Beaufort to provide students with a cyber activity based on their Cyber Pi crate. This was well received by the students, who also got to use the new 'Cyber Hub' facility that Beaufort now boasts. Not only did CSA staff deliver the activity for the students but in addition, David, one of CSA's two Directors, took time out of his calendar to chat and meet with students, holding a Question and Answer session, as a way of trying to improve some of the student’s aspirations, by sharing his own personal story and understanding of opportunities that are presenting themselves for students looking to move into the Cyber Security career field when they leave education. Raising student's aspirations is a key focus for Beaufort in addition to getting students excited about Computer Science and Cyber Security.

Five schools to TNMOC

As part of NCSC's efforts to enhance the delivery of Computer Science within the projects schools and the concept of seeing if schools could work with each other, 5 schools got the opportunity to have a free visit to TNMOC. Newent and Dene Magna travelled together, Beaufort and Barnwood Park travelled together, and Cleeve school visited on its own. All the students and teachers had a fantastic and educational time, with Cleeve seeing again some of the computers he used to use. NCSC are in further discussions with the TNMOC programme leads about developing the experience for other schools to visit. Wyedean is looking to take students in the near future. If this is something your school would like to participate in, please get in contact with the NCSC team.

Wyedean to CSA

CSA have been working closely with Wyedean to help develop appropriate learning material for both students and teachers for their Cyber Pi crate concept. As a thank you and to also help CSA test their new CyberDea concept, CSA hosted 24 female students at their facility in Quedgeley for the day. The students got to experience the Cyber training range in addition to getting some expert help from CSA staff on using the Cyber Pi crates. The experience as a female only event helped inspire the students and was hyped as part reward for some excellent school work. CSA were pleased to trial their new CyberDEA experience while also supporting the work of the project to inspire more female students into Computer Science and Cyber Security.

Space the final frontier

Cleeve School have been running a Mars Rover project club funded by the NCSC. The Mars Rover project has been a great success, engaging students and teachers in three separate areas: science, computer science and engineering. Three separate groups of students have worked in the different disciplines, coming together to be involved in the near space balloon flight in October. From the science viewpoint, teacher Katy Warwick is delighted at the opportunities presented both for science and for personal development. Katy feels the project has given learners the chance to develop new ideas for experiments, and to see those experiments put into action on the balloon. Moreover, the science did not stop after the balloon was retrieved; the team delivered a presentation, explaining the science that took place. In Computer Science, the team has recently been experimenting with different types of motors in preparation for driving the robot. This is a complex task, and they have even experimented with the accelerometers in Spheros to consider what happens if the rover hits something. NCSC are keen to hear from any other schools who would like to undertake a similar cross- curriculum project to expose more students to Computer Science and now it interacts with aspects of other subjects.

Wyedean, an NDA and Pi-Top

Pi-Top, the vendor that supplies the Ceed Raspberry Pi device came on board as supporter of the project and was impressed with the use of their product in both the Cyber Club and in lessons at Wyedean. This led to them visiting Wyedean to explore and trial some of their new product development with Wyedean and their

students. Unfortunately, Wyedean had to sign an NDA, so little can be said, except for the students had a great time and were able to provide useful feedback to the company.

Ribston - where one Club is not enough

Ribston have been very busy enhancing and increasing the amount of hours that students at Ribston have in Computer Science. This has involved running lunchtime Cyber Clubs 4 days a week (lunchtime being preferred due to Grammar schools having a wide student catchment area so after school event attendance is limited). The Year 7, 8 and 9 club has focused on robotics and developing a weed clearing robot (weeds are apparently a problem at Ribston). The Y10/Y11 Club has been working on designing a new school bell system working on Raspberry Pi. The 6th form Cyber Club has focused on the understanding of hardware, with the project funding a competition within the club to design and spec a computer to run as a dedicated VR platform. The hardware for the winning design has now arrived at the Beaufort Hub school and is awaiting Ribston to visit and start the physical build. The project has also trialled a concept to support both lesson and club activities with 3D printers, purchasing 10 3D printers for Ribston students to use. This trial was deemed a success in using larger numbers of cheaper 3D printers to facilitate student interest (Both Cleeve and BEaufort have single more expensive 3D printers purchased by the project but experienced long waiting times for Student use). These 3D printers will soon become bookable assets for other schools to make use of. Interestingly the Y8 students who this was trialled with originally are now acting as ‘Cyber Ambassadors’ and supporting Y7 club activities using the printers. Barry has also pioneered a human computer activity that was run successfully in school, while Mikki has developed an SQL injection activity and lesson plan that has been posted on the Cyberhub.uk site.

Primary Schools head for Cleeve Hub

Cleeve has been working on developing a relationship with the Cleeve primary feeder schools, to establish a local community to support the expansion of Computer Science activities being undertaken in the primary schools. Cleeve has either visited or hosted teachers from Bishop’s Cleeve Primary Academy, Grangefield, Woodmancote, Gotherington and Winchcombe primary schools and has been developing common Schemes of Work (posted on the cyberhub.uk) website to support the use of the classroom technology dropcrates by the primary schools. Great use of the sphero's are now being made by the primary schools.

Wyedean joins the publishing A-list

Wyedean has joined the lofty ranks of those project teachers who are giving back to the community by publishing lesson and activity plans on the cyberhub.uk website. Wyedean has recently published material to support lesson provision on Micro:bits and Xcode. NCSC are keen that all teachers involved in the project give back and support the community of teachers by developing lesson and activity materials, especially those that use the dropcrates of technology available within the project. Thanks to date also go to Ribston, Cleeve, Beaufort, and Denmark for their efforts in developing material to support other teachers in the project and hosting on the cyberhub.uk website.

New Industry Supporters come on board

BAE Systems, Raytheon UK, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and CGI UK have all recently joined the project to help provide support to our schools. Raytheon have already supported the Cyber day at Denmark Road, CGI have supported the Cyber day at Beaufort and Bank of America have supported the Dragons Den at Newent. What is pleasing to see now is that schools are bringing in new industry supporters themselves in addition to the NCSC team approaching companies. This aspect being very key to the long-term sustainment of a Cyber/Computer Science Educational Ecosystem within .

CSA provide the project with three Hacking Servers

Thanks to CSA's generosity the project now has three micro servers that host vulnerable virtual machines for students to practice their ethical hacking skills against. The servers can be networked to the projects dropcrates of laptops for students (and teachers) to explore all aspects of ethical hacking. CSA have also offered to help run sessions for schools with them. The servers have now been put into three dropcrates and are available on the booking system.

New Technology Dropcrates released

NCSC having listened to the projects teachers have developed and released several new technology dropcrates for booking:

• 2 X Portable VR dropcrates (Containing a Dell Alienware Laptop and Oculus Rift complete with lots of educational VR software) • 3 X Hacking Servers • 3 X Headphone Crates (30 in each) • 1 X Raspberry Pi Crate (15 Raspberry Pi's, 15 Raspberry Pi Webcams + chargers) • 1 X Raspberry Pi IOT Crate (15 Cloudio IOT Cards + 2 Grove IOT Sets) • 1 X Webcam Crate (15 USB Webcams)

Numerous other crates are still in development and will hopefully be released for booking shortly.