Outreach

The CEDAR Outreach team is proud to collaborate with our College of Education cohorts on the WySLICE initiative. Through funding from the NSF, WySLICE aims to provide teachers with the necessary trainings and course materials to effectively introduce Computer Science topics into their classrooms. The Wyoming Department of Education has implemented their Boot Up Wyoming 2022 program which sets the deadline of having Computer Science standards in every high school curriculum by the start of the 2022-23 school year. The WySLICE program was created in order to help administrators and teachers meet this requirement.

The CEDAR Outreach team has developed multiple different educational activities which make use of the micro:bit development board. This board features input buttons, and LED matrix display for output, as well as several sensors that demonstrate to students how electrical sensors interect with the physical world. In order to program these boards, students use a graphical, block-based programming language available in any modern web browser to create and test programs to be uploaded onto the boards. At a very low price-point (~$18) these boards are very cost-efficient for K-12 educators while providing a slew of capabilities to introduce students to computer science. 

TEALS is a Microsoft Philanthropy program whose goal is to bring computer science education into high schools across the nation. Computer Scientists from academia and industry are brought in as co-teachers to both instruct students on the topics but also to give the teachers their own understanding so that they may take over full instruction. By doing this, students are not only taught computer science but teachers are also learning the topics they need to successfully teach their students for many years into the future.

"The GenCyber program provides summer cybersecurity camp experiences for students and teachers at the K-12 level. The goals of the program are to increase interest in cybersecurity careers and diversity in the cybersecurity workforce of the nation, help all students understand correct and safe on-line behavior and how they can be good digital citizens, and improve teaching methods for delivery of cybersecurity content in K-12 curricula." - GenCyber Website

The CEDAR Center has been hosting the Wyoming GenCyber summer camps for K12 students the past two years. During these camps students, parents, and teachers are taught about basic cybersecurity concepts through hands on, interactive activities at no cost. These activities ranged from creating hand-made ceasar ciphers to programming secure remote controls for 4-wheeled robots using micro:bits. Click here to access some of the micro:bit activities created for the summer camps.