A request - Cyber Security Activities with VEX GO

VEX GO
1

There has been a request for Cyber Security Activities with VEX GO. If you have any, please share with our Community.

Have any other requests for Activities, let us know!

2 Likes
2

@Nicole_Champagne love this suggestion. I haven’t got any yet but I would like to suggest the development of Cybersecurity Labs aligned to standards (in similar to STEM labs) that has sequenced activities and pathways for educators to work on and build knowledge with our students incorporating the much loved VEX GO kits.

1 Like
3

@Joe_Edlhuber I have one activity suggestion to kick this off:

Cyber Treasure Hunt

This activity involves both coding and cyber skills. The aim of the game is for students to program their VEX GO robots to find a ‘treasure’ (a specific object or marker) hidden somewhere in the classroom or designated area. The twist is that clues to find the treasure are hidden in various digital platforms and require certain cyber skills to retrieve.

Here’s a breakdown of the activity:

  1. Set the Stage: First, hide the ‘treasure’ in a certain area of the room. Create multiple clues leading to the treasure, each clue guiding to the next.
  2. Cyber Clues: Now, hide these clues in various digital platforms. For example, one clue could be hidden in a coded message that needs deciphering, another might be concealed in the metadata of an image, one clue could require a simple programming task to be completed, and so on. You can also incorporate basic cybersecurity elements such as basic encryption or steganography (hiding information within a digital file).
  3. Robot Programming: Once the students have found a clue, they have to translate it into a set of instructions for their robot. For example, a clue might say “drive forward for 100mm, then turn right for 90 degrees,” and the students have to program this into VEXcode.
  4. Retrieving the Treasure: The final clue should lead the robot to the treasure. The first team or individual to guide their robot to the treasure wins!

This activity would help students develop their programming, problem-solving, and cybersecurity skills, while also being an engaging and fun game. You can adjust the complexity of the cyber clues based on the age and skill level of your students.

1 Like
4

@Nicole_Champagne and @Michele_Pikunic I had a great 1-on-1 session around this topic at the VEX Educators Conference. Here are some of the ideas that we brainstormed with Amanda Taylor and her colleagues around Cybersecurity activities with GO:

  • With VEX GO: connecting to the wrong robot to be ‘hacked’. You can get into some interesting ethical conversations around this as well - How can you tell what you’re connecting to? Why is it important to know what you’re connecting/communicating with? How does it feel to be ‘hacked’? What should you do if you get hacked? Etc. This could also tie into things like how does it feel to be a hacker vs. a helper.

  • Doing a Bug scavenger hunt - you can do this with any platform, where you start with simple bugged projects and build in complexity throughout the hunt. We talked about theming these to tie it to a ‘heist’ or a neighborhood or something, so there’s a storyline the kids can be a part of. For instance, if the Code Base is like a self-driving car, if it’s hacked it could be very dangerous. So doing things like coding the Touch LED to be a traffic light, and ‘hacking’ them to make all green lights appear, and coding the Code Base to only drive when it’s light is green, or something like that.

  • You could use the TouchLED’ s to show red/green depending on the state of the hacked/unhacked vehicles as well, if students were to find the hacked robot/device and ‘fix’ it within the neighborhood.

We were also thinking about 123 in this context, and came up with these ideas that could be inspiration for you:

  • With 123: Using the ‘If ___button’ Coder cards or blocks to create a ‘hacked’ 123 Robot that students either have to ‘hack’ and recode the buttons, or ‘unhack’ and put the buttons back based on what they observe the robot doing.

  • Coding the 123 Robot to make a password, by driving it to various letters on a Field. Groups can code their robots to ’spell’ a word, then swap with another group to try to decode their project. Start with just movement, then add sounds/glows/wait to help highlight which letters are actually part of the password.

1 Like
5

Great share @Audra_Selkowitz! I love these ideas and the fact you can really expand on them with collaborative conversations. I can see these being very engaging.