I’m a sucker for a good infographic and I still remember when I first came across the book Information is Beautiful by David McCandless and the vast collection of infographics on a wide range of topics – it was love at first sight!
Since then, I’ve shared a few times the cool “fish n chip” infographic poster on the different types of phishing attacks that exist and this has proven popular as there is just something about an infographic that visually draws people in and helps them process content or serious messages very effectively.
Way back in 2014 when I was still the Director of ICT at St Andrew’s College, I worked with our communications team to come up with some classroom/hallway posters aimed at students to help them think carefully about the content they were seeing when online. You can see the complete series on the blog post I wrote at the time here: 4 Classroom Posters Supporting Digital Citizenship With Our Students | StAC e-Learning Stories. Two that I particularly liked were:
And
I particularly liked the idea of “ask 3 before me” as it was intended to get students helping students with technology questions, rather than always going to the teacher as the ‘source of truth’ on these things!
With this in mind, I wanted to share two more that I came across this week on the important topic of CyberSecurity in the K-12 industry. These have been prepared by Microsoft and made freely available to help school leaders have robust discussions on this important topic with students and teachers.
Think For A Tick Before You Click
The first of these (original file source) can be seen below and focuses on helping students (and I’d include teachers) in evaluating a link before clicking it, learning to identify the tell-tale signs of a suspicious link:
K-12 CyberSecurity Conversation Guide
The second (original file source) is a more extensive guide to help parents/teachers/caregivers have robust conversations with children about healthy cybersecurity practices:
This guide also contains some useful links at the bottom which I’ll reproduce here:
- https://aka.ms/edu-cybersecurity-guide
- https://aka.ms/edu-cybersecurity
- https://aka.ms/what-is-phishing
- https://aka.ms/what-is-malware
- https://aka.ms/parental-control-apps
My Thoughts
Like most things when it comes to parenting and teaching children, the message is never “one and done”. Rarely do they absorb and retain the key messages when first introduced, so I prefer to take the “little and often” approach to education with my own kids, frequently weaving low-key reminders into conversations about good cybersecurity practices.
As my two older daughters would no doubt attest to, I regularly remind them about MFA (Multi Factor Authentication) when it comes to setting up a new online service, especially an email account or social media presence! The above two infographics simply add to the resource kit that a school or parent can use to help upskill and equip students to use technology more safely and effectively – I trust this is helpful!
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