The Adventures of ScriptKitty

Abstract

Internet safety and privacy considerations are increasingly important topics for adolescents. While online games and other media exist to introduce middle school and high school students to security and privacy concepts, there are very few practical exercises that reinforce concepts in a hands-on manner. In this paper, we introduce "The Adventures of ScriptKitty", a free on-line learning aid that is used in conjunction with the Raspberry Pi single board computer. We piloted "The Adventures of ScriptKitty" to 51 middle school and high school students. Our results show that students significantly improved their understanding of basic network topics and felt more confident on how to stay safe on the Internet.