Idaho Team Impresses in Girls Go CyberStart Coding Competition
After moving through the GWC tutorials, starting with programming animations using Scratch and progressing to Python language, Youinou suggested they try competing in Girls Go CyberStart. They began with CyberStart Assess, which qualified them to go to the second stage, CyberStart Game. During this time, Rudolf learned of INL’s K-12 Education Enrichment program and the support available from Coding Coalition.
Even after the school went to remote learning, club members completed enough levels necessary to qualify for the national competition. The challenges, which included code-breaking, decrypting ciphers and finding hints in HTML code, were a lot of fun, said Rudolf, who admits she had a lot to learn about coding and cybersecurity. “You really learn some background in cybersecurity and hacking without realizing you are spending a lot of time engaged,” she said.
Advice from an Expert
The Skyline team’s cyber guide, May Chaffin, is a computer security researcher for INL. She is also the mother of team member Karina, which gave her a personal stake in the team’s success. “They were all working really hard to attack the challenges,” she said. Even after 10 ½ hours the first day, at night they were still thinking about them.
Because of a planned power outage, the team had to move from Skyline to a local hotel’s conference room. They were also limited by the computers a few members had, which lacked the capacity to load the competition’s virtual machine. “A lot of the challenges wouldn’t work for them,” Chaffin said. Nevertheless, her 17 years of experience in computer and cybersecurity at INL worked in the team’s favor.
Given the challenges they faced, Rudolf feels the team has a lot to be proud of. As Karina, Sarah and Symphony head off to college, it will be up to a new cadre to pick up the torch in 2021. “I’d say the greatest lesson from this year is to prepare better,” said Karina. “We had so many technical issues.”
“We are so proud of what this Skyline team accomplished and how they persevered and showed such creative problem-solving skills throughout the levels of competition,” said Jennifer Jackson, the INL’s K-12 Education Program manager.
Looking to the Future
INL plans to offer the Coding Coalition to students again this coming school year and is already working on plans to expand and improve the program. Future opportunities will be offered to elementary and middle school teams, and the type of clubs and organizations eligible for support will be expanded.
“The Skyline team is a great example of how the coding coalition model of pairing a school adviser with an INL cybersecurity STEM ambassador to lead a computer science based extracurricular team can be successful,” Jackson said. “We’re excited for next year to include more teams and more age groups in INL’s Coding Coalition.”
Educators interested in joining the program in the coming school year should watch stem.inl.gov for more information.
