Monday, February 26, 2018

Password Protection with Grade 4

We're discussing "Rings of Responsibility" in Grade 4: ways to be responsible to yourself, to your friends and family, and to the community (both in person and online). Common Sense Media has a great lesson on building strong passwords, which connects to digital citizenship at the self level.

The number one rule is ... don't share your passwords with anyone but the grownups you live with!

After that, try and make sure nobody can guess said passwords. We talked about avoiding dictionary words, substituting symbols for letters, using phone keypad numbers instead of letters ... one student suggested using Morse code, and another converting letters to binary code!

Using a Common Sense handout, the kids came up with "weak" and "strong" passwords for famous people. The next week, the students worked in groups to devise replacements for some of the weak passwords. For example:


Person: Isaac Newton
Weak password: gravity
Ideas for stronger passwords:
  • gr@v!ty4411
  • @55ytivarg!
  • @plscilw 


Person: Michael Jackson
Weak password: moonwalk
Ideas for stronger passwords:
  • w00n52wA!k
  • m0nw1!k1368
  • mjma1b2c3


Person: Ms. Moore
Weak password: ollibrary
Ideas for stronger passwords:
  • 0!lidr@ry
  • b00ks$shelf60
  • oak@libry.!
  • 0!!LbeRry!

How strong are YOUR passwords? 

No comments:

Post a Comment