Holyoke Codes presented a workshop about secret codes and cryptography to thirty-six high school girls on December 10, 2016, to cap their Computer Science Education Week offerings.
The girls all participate in the Girls Inc. of Holyoke Eureka! Program. Eureka! Scholars spend time on the UMass Amherst campus and elsewhere, experiencing lab-based activities in science, technology, engineering and math. This Saturday, they came to the MGHPCC and learned about the importance of password security and how to achieve it. They did some hands-on exercises in password cracking via dictionaries or brute force. They also learned about phishing and other social engineering schemes that fool people into divulging private data. Finally, they had fun practicing these concepts by playing PBS’ NOVA Labs Cybersecurity Lab game.
This workshop capped a busy Computer Science Education Week at the MGHPCC. Computer Science Education Week is a national effort to engage kids with computer science and computational thinking. Additional Holyoke Codes CSEd Week events included Scratch Hour of Code with Girls Inc. (3rd – 6th graders), Telling Jokes with ScratchJr, Scratch Hour of Code – Create Music! and Robotics Lab – Build Your Own Robots!
To explore Holyoke Codes programs and find upcoming workshops, please visit holyokecodes.org. To read about education and workforce development initiatives at the MGHPCC, please explore our community workforce development pages.
Story Image courtesy Girls Inc.
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