GenCyber Girls 2019 was a one-week, non-residential summer camp held July 15th-19th, 2019 at Coastline College in Garden Grove, CA. There were 51 girl campers that attended from Los Angeles and Orange Counties in grades 7th through 12th. The introductory camp emphasized the GenCyber cybersecurity concepts through hands-on exercises.
We discussed empowerment, cybersecurity careers, and cybersecurity education pathways that include cyber defense competitions and dual-credit courses at the high school level. Hands-on activities included a mock crime scene with digital forensics challenge, pc hardware disassembly and reassembly, network cabling lab, binary bracelets, and introduction to coding using the adafruit playground express arduino boards.
Presenters included 4 female FBI agents, 1 female NSA agent, industry professionals, college students, and a middle school student. Topics included introduction to cybersecurity, online safety and cyber wellness, empowerment, gender and cultural diversity in the cyber workforce, digital forensics, ethics and privacy, cybersecurity careers, cybersecurity student clubs, introduction to encryption, education and competition pathways in cyber defense ranging from middle school throughout to 4 year academic programs, cyber competition with capture the flag activities, and a research poster session using real world scenarios that kids would encounter.
The girls were encouraged to continue their learning in cybersecurity through multiple avenues, including starting a cybersecurity club and competition team at their school. At the end of the camp they were given the Arduino kits to take home along with free Code.org accounts where they have access to coding activities that work with the kits. They will be issued access to the course in a free Canvas Learning environment where they will have access to all of the content from the camp and earn a digital badge for their participation.
The follow-up event will take place at Coastline College in Garden Grove on Saturday, September 14, 2019. The campers will be invited to return for more advanced activities.
Those interested in the follow-up event are encouraged to follow our web resource pages.
www.cybertechgirls.org/gencyber-girls-2019/
Grant Number: H98230-19-1-0224
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