CyberCity initiative to enhance cyber curricula in Tulsa schools
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CyberCity initiative to enhance cyber curricula and activities in Tulsa-area schools 

TU will launch a new multi-year CyberCity program in the summer of 2020 to infuse cyber education into every school and eventually every classroom in the Tulsa metropolitan area, energizing a generation of students to transform the city and its economy.

During the first year of the CyberCity Initiative, TU will host up to four teacher workshops to impart cyber and cybersecurity concepts through hands-on activities designed for middle and elementary school classes. The activities will include projects, games and competitions, as well as content-creation lessons in classroom settings.

Cyber teachers for a cyber world

With financial support from the George Kaiser Family Foundation, TU’s Sujeet Shenoi, professor of computer science and chemical engineering and founder of TU’s famed Cyber Corps, along with Kimberly Adams, Chapman Senior Instructor of Mathematics, will hold four weeklong workshops in June and July 2020 — two for elementary school teachers and two for middle school teachers. Enrollment in each workshop will cap at 36 teachers. Groups of two to four teachers from Tulsa-area schools are encouraged to participate in a workshop to create critical mass, foster collaborative efforts during the academic year and add cyber curricula and activities to their schools.

The summer teacher workshops will cover cybersecurity concepts and best practices, online safety, cyber ethics, computer gaming, the Internet of Things, robot and drone programming as well as the critical infrastructure, cryptography and coding involved in the Python programming language. Each teacher will receive a $600 stipend, Raspberry PI with a keyboard and mouse, flash drive with instructional materials, lockbox kit and the book “Cracking Codes with Python: An Introduction to Building and Breaking Cyphers.”

“We envision enabling a generation of cyber-savvy “tinkerers” and innovators capable of changing the city’s economic base,” Shenoi said. “This is something we should do if we want to change our city.”

Beyond the summer series, TU will support teachers throughout the school year by providing an interactive web platform to share ideas and ask questions, creating an online community that fosters collaboration in developing lesson plans and other learning materials.

TU mini-camp

Expected in the fall of 2020 and spring of 2021, TU will offer mini-camps for the trained teachers to share ideas and best practices and explore lesson planning ideas. The camps will enable teachers to network with each other and other cyber experts to enhance their skills and increase their exposure to new technologies. Each teacher will receive a $100 stipend for participating in the mini-camps, and substitute teachers for a mini-camp attendee will receive $70. Mini-camp participants will be required to submit papers that reflect their cyber training and describe how they are implementing cyber curricula into their classrooms.

To learn more about the CyberCity initiative or to apply, please email Kimberly Adams at kimberly-adams@utulsa.edu or Sujeet Shenoi at sujeet@utulsa.edu.