A five-student team designed the mobile cybersecurity lab last school year. While two team members have graduated, the remaining students plan to continue working on the project by developing curriculum this fall and helping test it in the spring.
The bus is expected to debut in fall 2024, traveling to schools and events.
Team member Sienna Arellano, now a senior at Niwot High School, said there's a misconception among students that they're "not smart enough" to take computer science classes.
"We want to tailor the bus to how students best learn with technology," she said. "You want students to be able to pop on and they're immediately engaged. We knew we could do something that would ultimately help kids like us. Being able to inspire the next group of kids like us to learn about cybersecurity is very powerful and very motivating."
The team's work included using masking tape on the ground to map out the space, field trips to the transportation department to take measurements of the bus, taking virtual walk-throughs of the space and building a 3-D model.
"We spent a lot of time prototyping," said team member Gavin Crawford, a junior at Silver Creek High School. "We wanted to tailor it to how students learn. It went through more and more iterations so it would be a practical learning space. It needs to be easy to use for different lessons."
One of his favorite design features is that the seating space doubles as storage for lessons, which will be packaged with all the materials and instructions.
"Any teacher could just pick it up, pull a lesson out of a big bag and get started without any training time," he said.
The Cyber Explorer bus is the first of two new buses the Innovation Center plans to add. The second, which will focus on artificial intelligence principles, is expected to be built in the next few years. Both will use retired school buses as the base.
"The vision is to really promote the two topics in computer science that are growing, cybersecurity and AI," said Colin Rickman, engagement director at the Innovation Center. "We want to get a lot more curiosity and interest from students."
The district recently hired Summit Bodyworks to complete the cybersecurity bus renovations, which are expected to cost $238,600 and will include electrical equipment, cabinetry and stair access.
While the bus is converted, students will work on the curriculum with the help of Innovation Center instructors and a couple of Regis University professors.
"We can bring a student perspective into the entire curriculum," Arellano said. "Not so long ago, we were those third and fourth graders, so we have more of that mindset."
Ideas include letting participants try being either the hacker creating security issues or the hero fixing issues in a safe online space that's not connected to a network. Visualizations and live "attack" maps are other possibilities.
"The challenge is making it fun and engaging, but still really meaningful," Rickman said. "We want students to walk away saying they want to learn more."
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