Working with two key partners, the STEM Hub managed by the Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU) and the KMCC (Kent & Medway Cyber Cluster), iCSS is setting up the KMCSN (Kent & Medway CyberSchools Network). We are recruiting local schools / pre-university colleges as organisational members and also teachers / school staff as individual members, and also calling for supporters. If this interests you, please read further and join/support us!
KMCSN is a local network of stakeholders (organisations and individuals) who are interested in pre-university cyber security and online safety education and awareness raising activities for children and school pupils of all ages up to 18 years old, with a geographical focus on pupils attending a local school or pre-university college in Kent and Medway.
KMCSN is a major initiative of iCSS at the University of Kent, forming an essential part of its recognition by the UK Government as an Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Education (ACE-CSE) with a Gold award status.
Educating children including those below 13 years old is more and more important because the percentage of children using the Internet is now very high (Ofcom, Children and parents: media use and attitudes report 2023). This trend has led to increasing concerns among many people such as parents on online safety issues, therefore calling for the urgent needs to education children and young people about cyber security and online safety skills. The recently passed Online Safety Act 2023 by the UK Parliament is a reflection of such urgent needs. Recent research of iCSS has also shown many gaps in pre-university cyber skills development, and calls for more collaborative work in this area across different sectors (see here for a 159-page report iCSS researchers produced in 2022 for GFCE – Global Forum on Cyber Expertise).
KMCSN will support local schools/colleges, teachers and other school staff, university researchers and educators active in school outreach activities to better develop and deliver pre-university cyber security and online safety education and awareness raising activities, which will include CyberFirst-branded ones using materials provided by the NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre, part of GCHQ) thanks to the University of Kent’s CyberFirst membership. It aims at making all children in Kent and Medway more cyber ready and resilient future citizens, no matter what career path they will choose in the future.
A priority area of activities of KMCSN will be around developing useful and reusable resources for schools, teachers and other stakeholders, especially digital resources, design tools and guidelines. iCSS has already produced some resources before KMCSN is established, and will work with members of KMCSN to produce more in the future. We welcome members of KMCSN to suggest resources that should be produced and participate in co-production and co-evaluation of such resources. The more people join the production team and help testing developed resources, the more useful resources can be produced!
Another major area of activities of KMCSN will be to “train the trainers” in order to scale up its activities to benefit more beneficiaries. KMCSN will leverage a CyberChampions scheme to encourage non-experts to help advocate and support its activities, and to train some of them into competent trainers.
KMCSN will also organise events and provide free consultancy services, and will raise funding and sponsorships to make itself more self-sustainable in the longer-term future.
More about KMCSN including how to join KMCSN, a short-term timeline, a list of example resources, and how to contact us can be found at the following dedicated web page:
https://research.kent.ac.uk/cyber/kmcsn/
If you are keen to help KMCSN grow its memberships to reach out to more local schools, teachers and other relevant stakeholders, please consider using the following flyer of KMCSN (click the image to download a PDF version).
