Cybersecurity Engineering Lab Tools
Teacher: Patrick Perez
School: Life Ready Center
Amount: $4,578.56
Category: Materials
The main resources purchased by this grant were materials for creating, experimenting, and investigating electronic and mechatronic devices. These materials include microcontrollers that can manipulate different sensors and connect with different devices, tools for salvaging parts from older electronics and testing them to see how they work, and equipment for testing how well these electronic devices can protect them from special kinds of cyber attacks and hacks. Students are able to use these tools for creating and prototyping features of the same electronics they can see in everyday objects.
The students used them in labs to see the different side of systems they use everyday. When they use electronics they know that these things exist in a system that they can have direct control over. It demystifies complex things for them and empowers them to be more confident and creative. One student used the tools provided by this grant to update and repair one of their older handheld gaming devices. Another student used parts from a discarded controller to use in his own personal electronics project.
The students feel more empowered to investigate their own electronic devices and tools and try to come up with solutions for finding and fixing problems rather than throwing them away and trying to replace them. I have students in my class who were scared about breaking things in a simulated computer and now that same problem seems small. Now they have dealt with soldering circuit connections and putting together different components with their own two hands where mistakes can break something. The best thing about this grant is that it enables me to create a space in which students feel comfortable enough to try something new that they might fail at and use those failures as a launch point for future learning.