Ector County ISD’s Science Department and CS is Elementary are working to raise awareness about being safe in a digital world through a series of webinars.
Creative Computing is Tuesday and Artificial Intelligence is April 26.
“It is a way to bring families and their students together to raise awareness as to what it means to be safe in a digital world, but also to give them the opportunity to see what coding and our robotics could be in our district,” Science Coordinator Caitlin Couch said.
“Our district initiative is to create a solid STEM pipeline for our students for pre-k through 12th grade, so we’re trying to raise the interest and the awareness in those families,” Couch added. Those who attend all four evenings will receive a “Digital Family” certificate, and two Dash Robots will be given away live at each event. “They have two chances each of the four nights, so a total of eight robots will be given away and then the campus at the end of the four-night span, the elementary campus that has the most participants will win a snow cone party for their campus,” Couch said. The webinars are aimed primarily at elementary families because that is the district’s target area and the awareness isn’t there.
Couch said it’s hoped that they can help families understand what computer science looks like in ECISD and establish a foundation for when students move on to middle and high school. From there, students can get into solid computer science and robotics classes and gain high school credits.
“We had 140 families participate. We did this last year over a two-night span and we had just to kind of introduce our families to the digital world. We had about 500 families participate, so we’re hoping that we can increase our 140 families and just keep it going because it really is the knowledge of the future,” Couch said. The first night, families were able to create a digital family plan. They were shown what a phishing email might look like and to be cautious of when on a Zoom call or posting photos on social media because hackers can take details from those and get information from those items.
“We also did an activity where we tested the strength of our passwords to see how many days it would take for a hacker to crack our passwords,” Couch said. She added that the passwords strength and weakness surprised people.
“Some people think their password is good, but they’ve had the same password since they were 12 and so to look and see that it would only take them a matter of hours to crack your password was crazy. Then we had some that had really good passwords and it would take them years to crack. So it was really eye opening. Something as simple as having a calendar in your picture could give away special things like if you had a birthday on there, or things or an anniversary those are dates that people generally put in passwords so that’s a way you’re giving away information for people out there to hack into your stuff,” Couch said. They also did an activity where people were asked if something was a phishing email or not.
“It was pretty cool to see. Then we also looked at encryption — ways that you can encrypt files so that you can keep them from getting into the wrong hands,” she added. She noted that the webinars are on YouTube on the CS is Elementary website so people can watch them again.
The webinars also are offered in English and Spanish. They’ll get the exact same information, Couch said. “You can constantly go back and refer to those activities and refer to the tips and tricks that our special guests from cyber.org gave us for that night,” Couch said. Digital is the direction the world is going in. “Everything is on computers. Everything is going to be digital and so we want our students to be prepared for the future so that we can produce that top-tier student and really put that out into the workforce,” Couch said. Every student in ECISD has a device and the district is working to provide every family with high-speed broadband internet.
“We just thought it was our due diligence to help keep our family safe,” Couch said. She said families are going to participate in a planking contest to see how long each family member can maintain the plank.
They will collect data from everyone that participates and create a physical representation of what that data looks like.
With the artificial intelligence webinar, they will look at how data they collected can be used to start predicting what people would like to do and see online.
“I’m sure everybody has experienced that before, where your Facebook or something says, Hey, look at this. I know I know you that you would like it or something like that. Then we’ll end up with creative computing. So how do we put all the things that we’ve learned and then now start beginning to sequence them together to actually make digital GIFs and JPEGs and things like that, so it should be fun,” Couch said.
Over the past two years, ECISD has spent about $500,000 on robots. The state wants everyone to be STEM incorporated by 2024.
At her office, Couch had an Ozobot and a Beebot. The Ozobots look like the typewriter balls in IBM Selectrics.
“We do have all kinds of robots in the district, but this is a really fun one that encompasses everything that we learned,” she said. “They have voice recording capabilities. You can block code on them. We have kids that like to record their voices and then go in and scare their parents. So it’s kind of fun, but in all actuality, it’s pretty awesome because it’s a creative way to get them to start coding,” Couch added.
Block coding are like puzzle pieces that you put together. “Behind the scenes of the little puzzle pieces that you put together are that line code that you would get to in one of our more advanced high school courses,” she said.
Couch said it was kind of a “middle of the road step” where students learn sequencing, how to loop, degrees, and measurements “and things like that of what the robot can do.”
Then they get to line coding using JavaScript, for example, where they type in all the different pieces. Looping is where they can get the robot to do something a certain number of times, or more in a certain direction.
“They’ll start foundationally with directional coding, with 90 degree directions. Then they’ll move into 45-degree directional coding, and then into block coding and then into script coding,” Couch said. She added that this will be a good foundation for Odessa and the Permian Basin to grow its own . “We want to be able to constantly replenish that pool of individuals that work in our community and we think that if they have the best education and the best of all the worlds — digital or non-digital worlds — that they can apply and get those top-tier, high paying engineering type jobs,” she said.
