#frontiertools

The answer, it turns out, is to start with a big, unexpected move—one we’re exploring in an in-depth case study that breaks down our partner-first process of bringing the most relevant tools and strategies to bear when clients need it most. It’s a case study in one company’s journey to organizational transformation. But it’s also a case study in how, as a portfolio, The Frontier Project makes it happen.

To make our client’s vision a reality, we pulled from across our team, starting with custom workshops and learning programs from Frontier Academy to train and engage. The rest supported what Frontier Academy started: keynotes from Frontier Live to inspire, videos and animation from Frontier Media to share the message of change far and wide, and specially-produced guidebooks from Frontier Press to support new behaviors learned.

And the transformation our client experienced? It speaks for itself. 

If you’re looking for similar transformation and change, start first by diving into the case study here. Then, reach out. We’d love to start a conversation around your organization’s potential.

Tell us, is it really important for everyone to know how their computers work? True cyber security is completely dependent on understanding the field of computer science. In our modern world, our modern economy, and our modern environment, computer science is a knowledge that everyone needs. It’s on par with needing to understand English and math to be successful. And yet, it doesn’t get taught as much as it needs to. We’re working to change that.

When CodeVA started in 2013, there was really one class, and it was an Advanced Placement level class for high schoolers that was very high-level. Roughly 1,500 students took the AP computer science test that year. That’s it. Within the next few years as Virginia adopts its new computer science Standards of Learning (we wrote the law requiring those SOLs) every kid in the state will learn computer science, including coding, algorithms, and critical thinking.

Why start teaching computer science at such a young age? If you ask any adult when the first time they went on the Internet was, they’ll probably know. If you ask a 12-year-old, they’ll look at you like you’re crazy. It’s all they’ve ever known. But it’s still the Wild West. Computer science includes computer ethics. Teaching them why they should or shouldn’t do something online, or with their bank account or personal information, these are things that are important to computer programmers and to computer users. And understanding the computer science behind why it’s important, like how hackers use your information, that’s important to understand, too. We need to take the mystery out of how our modern world works.

We’re also not just teaching kids how to work on a computer. We’re teaching them critical thinking skills, those same skills that ultimately make us better learners in all other areas of study, like math and science and even language arts. Critical thinking also is, well, it’s a critical skill a workforce needs to ensure the integrity of a future employer’s cyber security. That native knowledge of what is ethical, what is good decision making, and what makes for good computer security habits is easier when we start teaching it at a young age. A lot of adults don’t have this locked in yet.

Why do you think that is? Adults of 2016 are not digital natives, and we’re living in a strange and unfamiliar world. Consider that nearly every one of us today has a smartphone. These are magic portals to everything in our life. But that magic is something we don’t fully comprehend, and that makes us vulnerable. I can get to my bank, all of my account files, all of my credit cards. But I can also use it to play. I can watch videos on it. I can play Angry Birds. I can shop on it—giving up a lot of personal information. Every time I do that, I’m being tracked and seen. It might be a legitimate tracking by the company I’m interacting or transacting with, or it could be illegitimate. It could be somebody phishing and watching to see what I’m doing.

So the hardest thing about getting adults to understand the threats of cyber security is helping them see how much power they have in the phones they carry around all day. Especially because it’s difficult for people to see the difference between how and when people behave when they use their personal device and when they use their company computer. They’re both screens. Your brain just assumes they’re the same thing. But it’s one thing to risk your personal data; it’s another thing to risk the security of your employer.

How can we stop our brains from making that jump and instead see how much power we have? We have to pull back the curtain and showcase the science behind this technology. We’re at a point in time where we’re experiencing a big momentous shift in how we understand the world. Think about the Gutenberg press. By making books a mass-produced commodity, it essentially gave everyone access to reading. Before the Gutenberg press, reading was considered its own sort of magic. Reading, writing, and the ability to store and transfer through time knowledge and ideas was something reserved for clergy members. It was mysterious to the average person. Not only was there a technological change with the invention, there was a philosophical change as well. Knowledge is power, and suddenly even the common man could possess that power. We pulled back the curtain.

It’s the same today. Our “digital clergy,” if you will, have been Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos--the tech entrepreneurs who have amassed vast fortunes based on what really amounts to their ownership of massive amounts of data. But now, anyone with a little training and the right program can develop an app. And as more businesses are becoming tech companies skinned as banks or retail stores or music retailers, those businesses need a digitally literate workforce to keep pace. Data--the ability to utilize Big Data as a tool to sell or to invent or to discover or to bank--has us entering a new age in human history, not unlike the transformation brought about by the last time knowledge once reserved for a few was suddenly in the hands of everyone.

So, in essence, we have to promote a modern-day literacy. Yes, exactly. Just how the press prompted widespread literacy, so too does teaching computer science. It’s just a different kind of literacy—digital literacy.