Here at our school, intelligent female students have rose to the test of partaking in this year’s cyber first challenge. But what does this mean?
The girls cyber first challenge is a nationwide competition, hosted by the National cyber-security center, aiming to encourage more girls to consider pursuing a career in computer science.
Female students from year 8 will take on a wide range of puzzles to try and gain as many points as they can – aiming to qualify for the next challenge of competition.
These range widely from cryptography, logic puzzles, to AI and networking!
The students’ group into teams of four, to get through as many challenges as possible.
The puzzles offered go further than what is taught on the school curriculum, to really try and stretch their computational thinking.
Real world uses of python, net code and JavaScript are all being demonstrated to show the real technicalities of cyber-security.
Why is it hosted?
This challenge is hosted due to a lack of female students in cyber-centered jobs. Girls are encouraged to pursue careers in computer science, and if more girls are encouraged, then it may be less daunting for other girls to take on careers in this field.
I know my friend from another school feels very anxious about taking computer science, as she is the only girl in her class and all her friends left because they felt intimidated by it being such a male-dominated field.
For a nice touch, the gala event is hosted on the 8th of March, being International Women's Day.
Not only for a great opportunity to make friends and learn valuable thinking skills, but the enticement of laptops may also attract competitive people to win.
The challenges are said to be tough, but the competition as a whole has taught many participants persistence.
I managed to speak with some students participating, who said the challenge helped them “build resilience and confidence”
Some students said that they liked the fact that these challenges taught them things they had never known how to do before, like inspecting a website.
However, none of this could happen without the hard work of the amazing teacher who runs and hosts the challenge , Miss Lee.
Two years ago, four of our amazing students managed to win the competition, bringing back nothing but pride for our school and amazing experiences for them all!
Good luck to all the participating teams this year!!
