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High School Hacking

By Ian Scott

I just discovered a new website that’s aimed at teaching high school students about computer and Internet security.
Sponsored by ISECOM, the site contains a lesson plan that teachers may use to teach
teenagers about hacking and helping them become more aware of security and privacy issues.

Each lesson focuses on a particular subject, and builds upon knowledge learned to show teeanagers what they should be thinking about as they
protect their own home computers and networks. And I think it’s pretty good stuff. Sometimes though, the information is basic, and other
sections probably need a bit more work. For example, one of the first sections in the course discusses “Ports And Protocols.” While it’s all
quite interesting, I’d be concerned about the average high school student understanding this particular section. But maybe I’m just
thinking about myself in high school, more than 20 years ago.

All of the other sections come with fun excercises, advice on further research, and hopefully, will get teens more interested in the nuts and
bolts of computing without needing a lot of technical knowledge. Even many adults would probably benefit from perusing the lesson notes.

The Hacker High School website states:

” Today’s kids and teens are in a world with major communication and productivity
channels open to them and they don’t have the knowledge to defend themselves against the fraud, identity theft, privacy leaks and other
attacks made against them just for using the Internet. This is the reason for Hacker Highschool.”

The aim here is to give teens the knowledge and tools to understand how fraud, identity theft, and privacy leaks can happen while introducing
them to some good tools that they can use to see what’s going on, on their own computers.

Another concern I have are teachers. I once talked to an owner of a kid’s programming education company, and he told me that he never hired
teachers. He had tried that in the early days of his business, but found that public school teachers were simply not very good at teaching
technical things to kids. Instead, he now relies on motivated programmers that have a love for their work while also being excited to
teach kids.

But if High School Hacking can make a go of this, it’s a great step to increasing kids’ awareness of what they can do to protect their
computers. The material I looked at inclued:

Unfortunately, the sections on E-Mail Security & Privacy and Web Security & Privacy were not available.

Take a look at this site yourself. I think they’re on to the right idea here: http://www.hackerhighschool.org/

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