Brownie Cybersecurity Badges

GSUSA recently introduced three cybersecurity badges at each level.  While you can find the requirements on the publicly accessible Badge Explorer, the suggested activities are on Volunteer Tool Kit.  While there is a badge packet for sale that covers all three badges, it contains background information.  It does not provide the choice of three activities per requirement. It is also freely accessible compliments of Girl Scouts Farthest North.  Click here to see it.  

Volunteer Toolkit provides two complete lesson plans for each badge--in other words, if you do it their way, it will take you two meetings per badge.  The plans give you word-for-word scripts to follow as well as any handouts or coloring sheets you will need.  They are great for beginning leaders but many people find them difficult to skim through to pick out the activities so as to decide whether to use them or not.

This post is an attempt to summarize all the Brownie Cybersecurity badges in one easy to follow place.

Cybersecurity Basics

Requirements:

According to Badge Explorer, the requirements of Cybersecurity Basics are:

• Find out how you use technology
• Discover what your technology can do
• Find out how to create layers of security
• Find out how to use real-life safety rules when you go online
• Find out how messages travel on the internet

Activities:

The following activities are in the VTK plans.  The talking points given in the plans connect the activities to cybersecurity.

• Draw a picture of a safety rule you use in everyday life
• Play a question and answer game with provided questions about computers and cybersecurity
• Have a scavenger hunt for various things/devices that have been replaced by smartphones and/or tablets such as CDs, address books, maps, journals, and flashlights.  Talk about how smartphones do all the things these used to do, and are easier to carry.
• Talk about layers of protection.  Then have the girls draw a castle with many layers of protection.
• Write a message on index cards, breaking it into two "packets".  Exchange messages with another girl.  Talk about how information is sent from computer to computer in packets
• Discuss three cybersecurity safety rules, what they mean and how we follow them. Then split into three teams and each team makes a poster about one of the rules.
• Play a relay race game that illustrates how messages travel across the internet and reinforces saftey rules 
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Cybersecurity Safeguards:

Requirements:

According to Badge Explorer, the requirements for Cybersecurity Safeguards are:

• Create your identity
• Find out what information to keep private when you go online
• Find out how to share information safely online
• Find out why you have to be careful about who you trust online
• Test your knowledge of online safety rules

Activities

The activities given in VTK are as follows:

• Using an ink pad and paper, make a set of fingerprints
• Discuss internet safety rules
• Compare the troop fingerprints to the major types--swirl, arch and whorl
• Discuss that fingerprints are unique to you and part of your identity
• Discuss other things that are part of your identity, including photos and passwords
• Discuss information that we need to keep private online
• Each girl puts her name, address, phone number, age and date of birth, school name, favorite color and favorite foods on sticky notes.  She then puts the sticky note on the appropriate side of a private/not private poster. Discuss each choice
• Discuss how stickers people put on cars can reveal private information.  Then pass out handout "My Family and Me".  Girls cut out the parts that describe their families.  They paste public information on the outside of a paper bag; put private information inside.  Share with group. Remind girls that information on the inside of the bag is not to be shared online.
• Write or draw your private information
• Discuss what information is private and why they shouldn't share it online
• Discuss how passwords protect private information.  Girls make up a password to protect the private information they drew/wrote
• Talk about how shredders protect private information.  Have girls tear up their private information; point out that crumpling it in the trash doesn't work.
• Girls write two truths and one lie about themselves on an index card.  Others guess which is which.  Point out how hard it is to tell if someone is telling the truth. 
• Discuss how we share private information with those we trust, but not with strangers
• Play cybersecurity true or false:  Leader makes a series of statements given in VTK; girls jump forward for those that are true; backward for those that are false.  
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Cybersecurity Investigator

Requirements

According to Badge Explorer, the requirements of the Cybersecurity Investigator Badge are:

• Crack a code to solve a problem 
• Investigate what’s real and fake in photos
• Find out about digital footprints
• Investigate how a computer virus can spread 
• Explore a cyber attack

Activities

Here are the activities from the VTK plans:

• Using magazines or newspapers, find two photos you like
• Define identity theft and computer viruses
• Decode a message written in a number for letter substitution code
• Write the name of their favorite food in that code, and let a friend decode it.  
• Discuss how computers can only read numbers, not letters.
• Look at photos selected at beginning of meeting.  Talk about what might be altered in them.
• Compare the two furnished photos to see what is different.  Talk about how things aren't always what they seem to be. 
• Discuss things it is ok to share online and things it is not ok to share.  Talk about how things leave a digital trail.  Create a trail of poster boards, each with a different type of information listed.  Girls jump on each board and strike a pose showing whether it is ok to share that information or not.
• Draw what you think a computer worm looks like
• Review things it is not ok to share online
• Play "telephone" in the classic way with a message about cybersecurity, but add "disrupters" (girls making notice and distracting the others).  Talk about how the internet can be disrupted
• Talk about how computer viruses are spread.  Then girls pick a slip that says not sick (all but one) or sick (one).  Play some music and have the girls shake hands with each other.  When the music stops, have the sick person identify herself.  Then ask who shook the sick girls hand, and point out that they are now sick too.
• Talk about how viruses slow computers down.  Then do a relay race with ping-pong balls on spoons.  If a girl drops a ball she is sick  has to do the rest of her turn backwards.  Talk about how being sick slows you down.  
• Talk about how you prevent yourself from getting sick; relate it to preventing computer viruses by not clicking on things if you don't know what they are or where they came from

Have you done any of these badges with your girls?  Did  you follow these plans or use other activities.  Please share with us in the comments.