June 15th CP training and hands-on STEM kit activity

Mid-June 2019 Aerospace Education Update

Team 508 held a CyberPatriot training session early Saturday morning on June 15^th. Cadets and senior members attending the meeting addressed several objectives. First, lessons learned from the first Exhibition Round of this year’s CyberPatriot competition were reviewed. An extended discussion of ciphers, codes, and encryption was undertaken. This was stimulated by the ROT13 forensics question. Cadets were urged to read the Introduction to Cybersecurity Activity Guide published by the CAP and complete the associated exercises. There are five modules in this excellent monograph. Completion of the Guide’s activities and competition on one year of CyberPatriot team competition completes a majority of the requirements needed to achieve the prized CyberPatriot Badge. Next, we read through our current Windows Checklist and I explained how the checklist is organized. New to version 2 of the checklist is an index that should enable more rapid navigation to desired topics. Following this, one of our mentors provided an introduction to authentication procedures, how authentication is achieved, and why it is so important to cybersecurity. In the future we hope to introduce the concepts involved in authorization. The final element of this session’s training involved a stop at the Cisco Networking Academy website to watch a series of introductory videos concerning the use of Cisco’s PacketTracer software application. Expertise in the use of PacketTracer is required to successfully compete in the Cisco Challenge portion of CyberPatriot. I look forward to our next training session.

Later in the morning we were joined by an additional cadet and senior member of the squadron to begin the assembly of our new Robotics STEM kit. The Air Force Association, through CAP, generously provides these STEM kits free of charge to CAP squadrons. This will be our fourth STEM kit. Aerospace Education at squadron 508 will begin a new focus on robotics during late summer and fall this year. Several cadets have voiced an interest in pursuing robotics activities in order to complete the requirements for a CAP STEM Badge.

Cadets divided themselves into three teams to parse the kit instructions into completion of sub-assemblies for this somewhat complex build. The kit assembly guide has more than 40 individual steps. The team completed about two thirds of the build in the allotted time. Another session will be scheduled soon to complete this kit and begin work on its duplicate. Then we can get to work learning basic robotics. Our robot has a pivoting base with elbow, wrist, and hand joints so we should have some fun using the direct control box and learning how to integrate the associated software package. My impression was that this was a great hands-on activity for the cadets who attended this weekend session.

I have developed the new “Passport Program” to help stimulate cadets to study STEM topics and to easily log/document the activity hours required to earn a CAP STEM Badge. The goal is for every one of our 508 cadets to choose a topic and earn either a STEM Badge or a CyberPatriot Badge. Status reports from participating cadets are scheduled for our AE meeting this coming week. Previously unannounced prizes will be awarded to these leaders of our cadet unit.