Page 33 – Mechanical Sympathy

Jeep Motototing South

Over the winter we got whacked by a snow plough and the insurance rental ended up being a Jeep Wrangler 4 door. I worked in an automotive shop to pay for university and Jeeps usually involved bringing an umbrella with you because they leaked so much, but this 2019 model has evolved from that poorly made thing. The mileage was better than I thought it would be for a big six cylinder, but I also discovered they come with an even more efficient turbo four that manages mid-20s MPG.

While we had it I stuck it in four wheel drive and went over a mountain of snow in a parking lot that would have beached anything else – and it did it on all season tires! At another point I had to take about 1500lbs of ewaste out of the school I work at and the Jeep swallowed it all with ease and it didn’t even seem to strain the suspension. On one particularly snowy night in an empty parking lot I four wheel drifted it and it felt surprisingly obliging doing something that athletic. I found the size of it also a nice surprise. I have to fold myself into the Mazda we have, but the Jeep felt like it fit.

What surprised me most about it was that it was genuinely enjoyable to drive. Initially I found myself fighting the big wheels on the road, but once I came to trust the different driving dynamics of the thing I found it a comfortable long distance coverer. Being up higher means I’m not getting all the slush in the face, which is nice too. We never got to try the roof-removing modular nature of it because it was freezing, but that’s another feather in its hat. I’ve been four wheeling in a tiny hatchback for so long that driving just feels like tedium. The Wrangler made driving feel like an event instead of just a necessity.

With that all swirling around in my head, I first looked up the Wrangler and found it cost sixty grand, which is ridiculous, but that turned out to be a leather clad special edition thing. The one I’d be looking at comes in at about forty grand, about the same as our last car, and there are big discounts on them at the moment. They’ve got one with all the needed options on for about $41K nearby.

Knowing how this thing handles loads, I started looking up bike hauling options with them. MotoTote has a 600 pound trailer hitch mounted motorcycle carrier that the Jeep could easily manage for $569 (I’m assuming that’s USD – so about $780CAD). Also knowing its go anywhere cred and how big it is on the inside, I had images of my son and I taking it camping and off-roading. A trailer with ATV and dirt bike on it would do us well. Parking up in the wilderness and then camping out of the thing seems like a real possibility. The Jeep’s outdoor image means there is a rich aftermarket of related products, even roof mounted tents, though it doesn’t need them. The fold flat rear seats open up a massive back space that two sleeping bags could easily fit in. A back attached tent makes a bit more sense in that case.

It’s a cool thing that could make the long wished for trip south in the winter a possibility.

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Hibernating a Motorcycle: Oil Changes

That ain’t a cheap oil change, but as expensive as it is,
it’s way cheaper than rebuilding a motor.

In a previous life I was an automotive technician and then service manager at a Quaker State shop. For a few years there I was right up on my lubricants. That background makes me very conscious of my motorbike fluid habits. One of my standing rules when I put away a motorcycle for the winter is to change the oil before I do it.

You watch someone like Nick Sanders ride up and down the Americas for tens of thousands of kilometres and you wonder how his Yamaha looked like it had barely been used at the end of it:

Engines are designed to be running. The very worst thing you could do is start and stop an engine over and over again (like we all do every day). In the case of Sander’s epic rides from Alaska to Argentina and back, while what the Yamaha did was astonishing, the fact that the engine was in good shape shouldn’t have been a surprise. It was barely ever allowed to cool down.

Oils become acidic and moisture seeps in as things continually heat up and cool down. Leaving old oil in your engine over the winter isn’t doing it any favours. Swapping out contaminated oil for clean oil before you put it away is a great idea, so your engine isn’t soaking in the bad stuff.

Swapping it again in the spring is just a waste of money. Oil doesn’t go bad sitting, but once you’re into the heat up cool down cycle again keep an eye on your mileage, and keep up on your oil changes, your engine will appreciate it.

Chemistry is where the big advances are happening nowadays. Today’s oils have astonishing temperature ranges and abilities. Here are some links on what’s going on with lubricants:
http://ift.tt/2foVjAW
http://ift.tt/1XixINJ
http://ift.tt/1aUeBGc
http://ift.tt/2f713eK
http://ift.tt/2foVlc2

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Bike Evolution

I’ve been pondering motorbikes as the season ends here in Canada and the darkness closes in. I’m only 300 miles away from putting the Concours over the thirty thousand mile mark, which has been the goal this year.

The Concours has been a revelation. This year I’ve gone international with it, doing thousand mile trips and circumnavigating great lakes. I continue to modify and adjust, making it more and more long distance worthy.

Surprisingly, I’m finding it very satisfying in the twisties, and that 999cc Ninja motor wails like a banshee if you wind it up, so there is no lack of visceral thrill in riding it. So satisfying is it that I’m left wondering what more I’d need in a road bike.

That’s where the KLX came in. As an off-road tool it’s purpose built, but I’m finding that I don’t have the time or the local access to dedicate to off road riding. I enjoy it, but the cottage I was thinking of using it at isn’t really that accessible and other than riding around on dirt roads, I’m finding it difficult to justify, especially for what it cost.

There is also the culture side of it. I get a nostalgic jolt out of the idea of riding a classic Scrambler all over the place, but MX riding? Not so much. It all seems a bit Ricky Racer to me. I like green laning, and trail riding, but I’m not so much about the radical off road stuff, so a less MX like bike would do the trick. One that scratches that nostalgic itch at the same time would do double duty…

Triumph’s Bike Configurator makes dreaming a bit too easy…

Maybe next year will evolve into a Scrambler while running the ever present Concours – a sport tourer and a multi-purpose classic would each get a fairer share of the time I can dedicate to the saddle.

The new Bonneville/Scrambler is something else again:

Bigger motor, lighter bike. The 2016 Bonneville Scrambler is a piece of fast art!

A Bits & Bytes Reboot

Hello TVO,

I’m active on Teach Ontario and my wife has been a regional councillor with you; we’re both big supporters of TVO.

A long time ago as a 10 year old new immigrant to Canada in the early 1980s I came across Bits & Bytes as I was teaching myself how computers worked. This became a career in IT that has since morphed into a career in education where I’ve coached students in my small town to national championships in Skills Canada and ICTC’s CyberTitan Student Cybersecurity Competition.

I frequently write about the dearth of computer skills in the education system and society at large. This one from 2017 is a good example. The article that kicked off that blog post offers a staggeringly dark view of digital fluency not just in Canada but around the world. We have all become increasingly dependent on computer technology while simultaneously wallowing in ignorance around how it all works.

I think back to how Bits & Bytes influenced a whole generation of Ontarians to take on this emerging technology and think it’s time for a reboot. If we’re going to plug our children into networks for their learning and live our lives in digital spaces then we all need to have a basic understanding of how these digital technologies work or we’re inviting abuse and manipulation. ICT (information and communications technology) is now considered a critical infrastructure by the government of Canada, yet most Canadians are essentially illiterate in it even as they come to depend on it more and more.

If you ever decide to put together a B&B reboot and are looking for people to work on it I’m all in. TVO’s mandate is to transform learning through digital technology, but if we don’t understand that technology then we’re nothing more than easily manipulated consumers of it. Addressing this illiteracy would also raise Ontario’s place on an increasingly interconnected world stage. Bring back Bits & Bytes 21st Century Edition and help educate Ontarians on the technology we’re all living our lives through!

Sincerely,

Tim King

Elora, ON

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Academic Integrity And Other Lies We Tell About Pandemic Teaching

My son works hard at school and just got his grade 10 honour roll in the mail. At the same time we got his first quadmester of pandemic learning report card and we were all shocked to see a precipitous drop in grades that means he won’t be on next year’s honour roll. Unlike previous years where the school made a point of acknowledging his individual education plan and supported him by ‘encouraging’ teachers to follow the medical recommendations on it, this year any support provided had to be snuck in because all support has been officially cancelled due to COVID19. Classroom teachers can have double cohorts of 20 students coming off busses with 35+ students on them every day, but all supports are cancelled because we don’t want to spread the virus. Keeping up with the demands of SAFETY when they are so arbitrary and ineffective is exhausting and frustrating.

As a parent of a child with an IEP I’m concerned that our double digit drop in grades is a system wide situation affecting hundreds of thousands of students with special learning needs across the province. Talking to parents of students with special needs, this seems to be what is happening everywhere. Kid’s with special needs are getting ground down by this rushed and cruel schedule.

The pandemic schedule slapped together by school boards is different all over the province as the Minister and Ministry of Education failed to demonstrate any leadership in planning a centralized response to this emergency. The result is a cobbled together mess that makes a mockery of educational expectations in (what was once) one of the highest ranked public education systems in the world.

I’ve worked in Ontario’s public education system for sixteen years and while the system has been far from perfect it has always made attempts to follow data driven, responsible pedagogy. The other night I attended an online meeting of Ontario Education Workers United who are trying to stop stacked simultaneous face to face and online classes. It was jarring to hear them talk about pedagogical best practices because it has been so long since I’ve seen any. I’ve always been led to believe that we follow the research in order to produce the best possible educational outcomes for the widest variety of students. Those days focused on best practices are far behind us. I’m still trying to work out how we were on strike last year trying to protect student learning, but this year a virus gives us an excuse to throw it all in the toilet. I really don’t know what any of the players in public education (unions, school board, ministries, colleges of teachers, etc) that I pay for actually stand for as 2020 closes. It certainly isn’t equity and support for students with special needs.

What I do see in public education, especially in the past two years, is a government intent on dismantling it for private, for-profit interests. Meanwhile, as the funding dries up, educational management (which you can only join with a raft of post-graduate degrees) operates on their usual bias of protecting the students most like themselves. This is upsetting both as a parent and a teacher. When money is thin those special needs are just an expensive and expendable bother. This is starting to feel like an unwinnable battle as the parents of special needs kids have to stand up against a biased system and a political party that seems determined to hurt them.

COVID has only intensified this inequitable situation. This slapped together, high-speed schedule that fakes an appropriate amount of instructional time (we’re at 52.5 hours of face to face instruction down from 110 hours) has no room for students with special needs. I’d love to see the live data we’ve already got for quadmester one but no one will want to show it because it won’t be flattering. We only follow the data when it suits us these days. The credit completion rates of fully remote elearning will pile on top of the grade drops and failures with face to face students to paint a damning picture of this ‘new normal’, but no one wants to work from that kind of data.

I sympathize with teachers struggling to retain some form of academic integrity when the system itself has made a mockery of it. Ontario curriculums are designed to be 110 hours long. Teachers are desperately trying to meet those requirements while being given a fraction of the time needed. We’re doing 52.5 hours of in-class instruction in multiple cohorts so students are in either face to face in the morning or the afternoon. This is done to keep group sizes under 20, which is wise during a pandemic, though when they stream off buses with up to 40 students on them (while f2f spec-ed support is cancelled) you have to wonder where the random lines are being drawn, and why.

More confusing are the instructions around the online half of the school day students are ‘supposed’ to be doing at home. That remote work is where we’re supposed to make up the other half of lost course time, but we’ve been told we can’t assess anything done remotely and students and/or parents can opt out of it entirely while still earning a credit. Most teachers seem to have responded to this by marking in a way that is specifically damaging to students with special learning needs, all in the name of academic integrity.

An argument might be made that if the same qualified teacher is running their own remote cohorts then a degree of online instructional effectiveness might be achieved, but I’ve yet to have a teacher qualified to teach my subject as remote support and I’m currently remote supporting a class I’m not qualified or experienced in. My make-work job there is reduced to helping students find links and make things work online, if they bother to show up, which a third of the class (the third with IEPs) aren’t doing anyway. We could have limited class sizes to single cohorts for classes with only one qualified teacher in the building, or even connected remote teachers between schools for specialized classes, but none of that happened because qualified teachers and even instructional time doesn’t matter anymore.

You can find this right on the Ministry webpage, but it isn’t true in a pandemic. The only thing your child with special needs can expect at the moment is to get run over by speeding quadmesters. Do try and keep them engaged and upbeat during a marathon health emergency though because you can’t expect their schools to be doing it.

Many IEPs will state that a student needs extra time in order to see success in their class, and board administration is expected to adhere to supports for these special needs. Our own experience getting run over by a rushed quadmester with little or no communication and sudden drops in marks without explanation, support or even an option for extra time is the result of teachers clinging to academic integrity when no one else is, from the Minister on down. It’s a war parents of kids with special needs can’t win because it seems as if the entire education system has come out in favour of punishing students with IEPs.

Special education is a human rights issue, but you can bet the lawyers are all over the health & safety not withstanding piece in there right now, though they’re strangely quiet about 40 kids on a bus. Discarding spec-ed supports is a top down decision done by a government with a history of special-needs abuse

At a time when everyone is under exceptional stress and trying to deal with a seemingly never ending health crisis you’d think the education system would focus on equity and support for those students most in need, but the opposite has happened. Service providers have an obligation to accomodate a person’s needs but this pandemic has unfortunately shown the true colours of both this government, the ministry it has infected and school boards who were more focused on rushing out a solution instead of looking after our most vulnerable students. Now that the new system is in place you can expect it to continue running over students with special needs which now includes an increasing number of non-IEPed students who are facing anxiety and depression as a result of the pandemic.

Expecting reason and compassion from the minister is a lost cause. I can only hope people in leadership positions elsewhere in the system take their responsibilities more seriously and start acting to support students and redirect teachers away from playing a part in this latest round of systemic inequity. We need to stop the myth that these cobbled together pandemic quadmesters have any kind of academic integrity, equity or kindness. Only then can we fix it, and fix it we must.

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Kawasaki KLX250 Suspension Adjustment

I can pick the thing up, so lifting up the wheels isn’t the ordeal
it is on the massive Concours. To get both wheels up I used
a wooden box on a jack and some jack stands on the back.

Today I had a go at the suspension of the KLX250. The previous owner is a much smaller fellow than me, so he had the suspension at stock levels (preset for a 150lb rider with no luggage or passenger). For a big guy like me (6’3″, 240lbs) the front was wallowy and the back felt loose.

The suspension adjustments are on the bottom of the forks at the front. The rear has rebound damping down at the bottom of the shock and compression dampening at the top.

I’ve included photos of each below. Tightening up the suspension was quick and relatively painless. The clicks are obvious and about half a turn of the screwdriver each. After cleaning up with wd40, I had no trouble turning any of them.

Click on any of the photos to get a bigger image.

front forks

On the bottom of the front forks you’ll find a hexagonal opening. There is a rubber cover in there. It’s designed with a flat edge and pops out easily with a small, flat screwdriver. Inside you’ll see a small, flat headed bolt. Each half turn creates an obvious click. I turned each side clockwise four clicks. No more wallowing, and the forks feel tighter on cornering. On braking I get a single, less pronounced drop. That was a quick fix.

compression damping
adjuster

rebound damping adjuster

rear suspension

The rebound damping adjuster is on the side of the bottom of the shock housing. It gets dirty under there so wiping it down first helps in finding things. It’s easy to get a flat screwdriver on the adjuster bolt, and it turns easily. The clicks are obvious, I turned it up (clockwise) four clicks.

The compression damping adjuster is obvious behind the cutout in the fairing. It was tucked in behind an electrical connector on mine which easily pushed aside. Since it’s out of the muck, this one doesn’t get dirty. The clicks were again obvious – I turned this one up four clicks as well.

I then took the bike for a quick ride to get gas. On the road it corners more tightly with none of the previous wallow. On the way back I tried to ride as directly as I could rather than follow the roads. I got to the end of pavement in a subdivision and found myself on a deeply rutted dirt road which led to a hydro station. I then nipped down a walking path to the road behind my subdivision. This bike is so quiet a rabbit was surprised when I puttered by. There is a large dirt pile where I came out of the bush so I zipped up it and back. Off road the bike is much tighter. There is still a lot of suspension travel, but I could feel what the wheels were doing much more clearly, the bike just feels tighter. I was just hoping to calm the wallow. That happened, but the whole bike dynamically feels so much more suited to me now.

Now that I know where the bits and pieces are, I’m intending to keep monkeying with the settings to get it customized to my size and preferences. With the settings that easy to play with, why not?

The Kawasaki KLX250 Owner’s Manual

Touring Ninja redux

I’ve been doing some research on a topbox for the Ninja again. Having a permanent carrying option would allow me to make the bike more usable on long trips by giving me lockable storage on the bike. It would also give my son a more comfortable and secure pillion with a backrest. If I could take him with me on some extended day trips we’d be able to make some miles this summer.

I’d initially thought of getting a bigger bike for two upping with my son, but the cost of insurance on larger cc bikes for new riders and the doubling up of insurance when you own two bikes (though you can only ride one at a time) has put that on hold. In the meantime, perhaps some storage on the Ninja would make it a bit more useful as a tourer.

Givi is pretty detailed in how to apply its luggage to my particular Ninja. I went to them first to figure out what the hell the difference between monolock and monokey luggage is. Basically, Givi monokey is the heavy duty kit and monolock is the light duty system. Monokey can be switched between top and pannier duty as well as being built heavier and tougher. Monolock is topcase only and meant for smaller bikes doing lighter duty. Think monokey for a big touring bike with lots of luggage and monolock for sports bikes, smaller bikes and scooters.

Givi suggestions for a Ninja 650r ’05-’08:
http://www.giviluggage.co/givi-product-focus/bike-overview-kawasaki-er6-nf-05-08/

What I need for the Ninja Topbox:

Not bad for turning the Ninja into a two up tourer and long distance traveller. I see some Givi luggage coming from A Viscous Cycle in the near future.

The Great Escape

This time of year always feels like Groundhog Day – go to work, go to sleep, wake up, do it again. It becomes so repetitive that it leaks into your mind, filling your thoughts so there is little room for anything else. This year it’s amplified by the negativity surrounding my work. All that combined with no riding for dark months on end and it’s hard not to get jammed.

If I time it right I can sneak out of Ontario on an above zero, dry road day. You can still find double digital daily highs in Cincinatti and south. A plugged in electric kit bonzai ride to Cinci and I’m out of the snowbelt. From there it’s a less ragged ride south to New Orleans. From Cinci I’d angle over to Memphis and follow the Mississipi down to the Big Easy…

After reading books like Todd Blubaugh’s Too Far Gone and watching Austin Vince Mondo Enduro the planet, I’ve often wondered what it would be like to get lost on the road. Once out of the snowbelt, I’d be in no rush to be somewhere. Without that very Western time fixation, I wouldn’t have to get wound up over deadlines.

If I’m not fixated on a destination the daily goals might not be that linear. With local knowledge I’d hope to find things off the beaten path as I meander…

Off the top of my head, I’d leave New Orleans along the Gulf, visit Austin and then ride the Twisted Sisters in Texas Hill Country. Austin’s also the home of the only North American MotoGP race, so if I timed my return with the race, I could be passing back through Austin on the way home in early April and catch Marc and the rest of the aliens doing their thing. The goal on the way south would be to get familiar with Austin’s weirdness for the return stop.

After wandering Texas I’d take a run up to the Very Large Array in New Mexico and do my best Jodi Foster immitation. New Mexico and Arizona have a pile of strange sites to see, so the wandering would get intense. Norman Reedus did a Ride episode in New Mexico that does a good job of showing what’s on hand out there.

Even that far south the mountains can also catch you out with northern temperatures as we found out a couple of years ago in the Superstition Mountains just outside of Phoenix in early January, so not rushing and timing your rides is important when at altitude. There are pile of old western towns and ruins in the US South West, along with some astonishing pieces of engineering. Meandering from photo opportunity to photo opportunity would be a nice way to ease into this slow motion ride.

Tuscon is home of the Aeroplane Boneyard where thousands of retired air force planes sit in the desert. A wander around there at sunset would be a glorious thing. I’ve done the Phoenix area a couple of times and travelled from the north end of Arizona from Las Vegas, but haven’t travelled as far south as Tuscon. From there I’d head across to Yuma, another famous western US location, before diving south into the Baja Penninsula. A desert riding tour would be a pretty cool way of seeing Baja.

Mexico is a whole other world. Most riding-the-Americas types blitz through it looking for a fast route south,but Mexico (with a final lunge into Belize) is where I’d wrap up this great escape from the never ending Canadian winter. Some crystal caves, Mesoamerican pyramids and Belize beaches during the deep freeze and then working my way back up to Austin for early April…

Seeing the Ozarks and the Tail of the Dragon during the weeks after the race would be a nice way to wind up this great escape, getting back to the frozen north just as it’s not frozen anymore.

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Behold! The Essay-inator!

In this corner, weighing in as the inevitable future, I give you: the writing algorithm!
… and in this corner, weighing in as a lazy, nineteenth century habit that no one can shake: tedious, overly structured High School English writing!

The trick is going to be creating an algorithm that plagiarism checkers won’t catch. That shouldn’t be too hard as they tend to look for matching text, and any good algorithm would put the pieces together in varying ways depending on the variables given.

With a proscribed structure similar to sports stories or financial reports, it should be fairly easy to get Narrative Science to modify their writing engine to accept key points and put together a five paragraph essay that perfectly follows the tediously exact, point-proof-explanation requirements of high school essay writing.

The process should go something like this:

student logs in to the website and enters brainstorming ideas based on a cursory reading on the subject matter (Macbeth should be covered in 20 minutes, tops)

thesis (an arguable statement) is generated based on ideas given (or offered, depending on how much you want to put into this)

supporting points are suggested. The algorithm places them in order of importance based on the number of hits and positive previous reviews, student picks the ones that grab them

the algorithm finds quotes from the play and lit crit that relate to each supporting point

body paragraphs are constructed following point/proof/explanation around chosen quotes

introduction and conclusion are generated based on body paragraphs

student reviews the paper for vocabulary or wording that doesn’t suit their style

if too complicated a word is used, the student can right click and get a list of synonyms

the completed paper, using variable data, is unique, and presented in the vicinity of the student’s knowledge of the subject matter, working vocabulary and writing style

Behold my essay-inator!

The point and click essay is finally here!

The efficiencies here should be obvious. A typical paper requires hours of reading, then re-reading looking for quotes, then formulation of ideas, then organization… hours and hours! This process could have a student sit down with a Shakespearean play they’ve never seen before, and have a finished essay completed in under an hour, on their smartphone!

They are still the authors, we’ve just taken the tedium and soulless nature of high school writing and given it to a machine, which only seems fair.

***

This is written facetiously, but it does raise a couple of interesting questions. If high school writing requires such heavy duty plagiarism checking and tends to be about the same subjects using the same formats, and marked with the same rubrics year after year, what is the point?

If these guys have come up with an algorithm that can write data driven, structurally sound pieces this well, how long will it be before someone has put together a five paragraph essay-inator? The only thing more soulless and formulaic than financial writing or sports reporting is high school English writing. Time to let the computers do what they do best and take this repetitive, tedious work and do it more efficiently!

Up next, mechanized marking of essays: time to take the tedium out of being an English teacher!

If this works out well, we’ll be able to have students ‘write’ essays, and have them ‘marked’ in a matter of seconds!

Now that’s progress!

Psychology, Cybersecurity and Collaboration in Educational Technology

We were beta testing Field Effect’s state of the art Cyber Range online cybersecurity training system this week in our grade 10 TEJ introduction to computer technology course. Our skill levels in that open class range from two students who are top ten in Canada in the CyberTitan student cybersecurity competition in their respective disciplines, to students who have never owned a personal computer at home because their parents thought a series of gaming consoles would adequately prepare them for life in the Twenty-First Century.

The challenges of keeping students with such diverse skillsets engaged in a single classroom aside, I’d agreed to beta-test this software because it offers a way past one of the biggest blocks to schools entering the Cyberpatriot/CyberTitan competition. To participate in the competition you need a desktop or powerful enough laptop computer being run by an operating system that can do more than just browse webpages through a single corporation’s lens. Virtual machines are whole computers that can be simulated in a single window, and they offer a valuable tool in examining cybersecurity issues without putting your school network or computers in peril (installing a virus to see what it does on a school computer would produce obvious headaches). If things go wrong in a virtual machine you just shut the window.

The Field Effect remote software ran fantastically well on our DIY student built classroom desktops and would work equally well on something as simple as a Chromebook,though trying to do this through a single, tiny 1366 pixel wide monitor would be a headache.

Once we got everything up and running I reminded students that they were manipulating a remote, virtual computer stored on a server in Ottawa. When you’re aware of what’s happening behind the screen, seeing what we can do on networks with enough bandwidth, like the one we now have at school, is mind blowing.

The cybersecurity gurus at Field Effect didn’t muck about when they set up this virtual online image. When you first boot up the compromised Windows 10 image you’re met with a full screen warning with flashing lights and a locked screen telling you that you’ve been ransomwared.

Even though students had been repeatedly prepared for this and I’d explained what a virtual machine was and how whatever happens in it doesn’t hurt anything, this threw half of them into a panic. The responses ranged from randomly mashing buttons to giving up, sitting back and loudly commenting on how stupid everything was. That’s in an optional course full of students who have demonstrated an interest and willingness to learn computer technology. The vast majority of students (and staff) in education don’t get nearly that much training, yet they’re all still increasingly depended on digital technology in every class they’re in.

The psychology of the attack was interesting. The flashing warnings and countdown timer did what it was supposed to do with anyone lacking in digital skills (which is a startlingly large number of people in Canada in 2020). Cybercriminals depend on this technical illiteracy. My CyberTitans and many of the other digitally savvy kids in the room right clicked on the flashing screen and exited ‘full screen’ mode, which brought them back to a desktop, which some then got lost in:

This ‘geek prank’ fake WindowsXP desktop was also on ‘full screen’ behind the ransomware fullscreen warning, but even when others showed students trapped by the ransomware screen the same F11/exit full screen way out of it, many had already succumbed to frustration and had given up (again). Several spent long minutes in the fake XP desktop trying to do things even when it said ‘fake XP simulator’ right on the screen. Being unresponsive to what a computer is telling you when things aren’t working right is a common response in weak users.

The digitally skilled CyberTitans were past the two blocks in seconds and were figuring out how to secure this hacked Windows 10 laptop and restore control for the proper user on it. More than 70% of the class were stuck in two hacks that were so easily resolved that I was left wondering how we could back things up and restore their mangled pride. Many of them, only a few days before, had done “my-experience-with-technology” presentations where they’d described themselves as digitally savvy, on Thursday morning this was in tatters.

The actual work of a cybersecurity operator in a case like this is not just to return things to normal but also to diagnose and identify the attack vector. In an administrative user account that shouldn’t have been on the machine there were files and instructions for how to run the malware, and even some background in downloads and browser histories that explained why this other employee had done what they did, but many of the students – including the quick movers, quickly deleted the evidence instead of forensically examining it.

This brought up the opportunity to talk about how much of what information security professionals do in our very networked world is more like a detective than a traffic cop. It isn’t just a matter of making sure every user complies with expectations, it’s also vital to understand how the system was compromised because this will guide future security defensive settings. It’s things like this that have me wondering why there are no cybersecurity courses running in any Ontario high school, or no mention of cybersecurity in Ontario computer technology curriculum. Any mention of security in the curriculum is rooted in 20th Century ideas of passwords or at best wifi encryption, the world has moved on. The cloud-based networked world we’re all leveraging in every classroom in Ontario goes unmentioned.

Once we got past the opening chaos, many students got into the detail work of repairing settings deep inside Windows, restoring control to the correct user and locking down firewalls that the ransomware had opened up. If this all sounds greek to you it shouldn’t, you’re using all those things right now to read this. And you and your students are using them every time you have them login to a cloud based service. We’re all offering an ‘attack surface‘ to cybercriminals whenever we go into the cloud, but pretty much everyone is blissfully unaware of it. People (users) are part of that cyberattack surface. Not addressing cyber-illiteracy means you’ve just opened up opportunities for bad actors.

The problem then became all the wounded male pride in the room. The students who struggled and gave up were also the ones who adamantly refused to get up and collaborate with the other people in our mono-gendered morning cohort. Fragile male pride means you can’t be asking for help – or collaborating, especially in a subject where you’ve convinced yourself you’re an expert. The more gender balanced afternoon cohort was constantly communicating and hive-minded their way through the infected image so effectively that most of them actually finished it with a perfect score.

The opening hacks were a source of laughter rather than long faces in the afternoon group. The lack of collaboration in the morning cohort and then the negativity that descended was something I’m thinking about as we proceed into our violently crushed quadmester. I’ve encouraged collaboration in face to face computer tech classes as no one works alone in modern tech jobs, yet the boys seem at a distinct advantage when it comes to creating or engaging in collaborative work, though even a small population of girls changes this dynamic.

This is an even bigger problem in my conservative country school where girls are peer and system pressured out of taking technology courses. I’m lucky to have 10% female participation in my junior computer technology courses. In senior courses we’re lucky to have a single girl in any of the classes of up to thirty-one students. The is problematic beyond our classroom. Women are least engaged in engineering and computer science where the most lucrative careers currently are.

At the end of the day many students got their first glimpse into cybersecurity and a number of them are curious, which is good because we need to open up this pathway to students. My original intent in giving this a try was to give students an opportunity to demonstrate their technical skills, but a surprisingly large chunk of the class, including students I thought would dig through it more effectively, were startlingly quick to give up and get pwned by some pretty simple hacks. This is making me wonder how Ontario students are doing in our half elearning face to face and fully remote learning courses during this pandemic. I fear our level of technical fluency is so shallow that unless online teachers are all doing simplistic, repetitive tasks that require no actual digital fluency, they and their students are unable to effectively engage. This goes a long way to explain poor online engagement.

From the latest attempt to encourage Ontario
Educators to integrate cybersecurity into their
practice, especially if they’re putting children
on hackable online devices.

I realize that cybersecurity scares the daylights out of most people (I’ve spent the past 3 years trying to engage Ontario educators in it to poor effect), but if we’re going to be putting more and more of our education system into digital spaces then we’re all responsible for raising digital fluency to the point where everyone can demonstrate resiliency in the face of unexpected outcomes. At the moment, throwing up your hands in the air and giving up seems to be the solution for too many people. Hopefully things like ICTC’s work with Field Effect will help spread a deeper and more resilient tool for improving cyber-fluency. Everyone working in the cloud needs this.

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