High school teacher wins international technology awards

FERGUS – The Centre Wellington District Superior College engineering teacher who has led quite a few CyberTitan groups to victory, lately gained a number of awards himself.

Tim King has gained the Cisco Networking Academy Alumni Innovation Architect award for the perform he’s accomplished to finish gender bias in the IT earth by encouraging and finally sending a girls’ group to the CyberTitan competitors.

But even higher than that, King was named the Capturing Star at the virtual awards presentation on Aug. 15 – an honour that arrives with two tickets to New York Metropolis and VIP tickets to the Global Citizens Pageant in September, an party to inspire action to conclude poverty.

“And that signifies I get to have meal with the Red Sizzling Chili Peppers – terms I under no circumstances believed I’d at any time say,” King mentioned in a cellular phone interview. “I can’t even picture! This is these kinds of a at the rear of-the-scenes, exclusive encounter.”

King experienced a vocation in IT in advance of turning out to be a teacher in 2004. He to start with taught in Peel and moved to the Higher Grand District School Board, and precisely to Centre Wellington, in 2007. 

For all that pcs and IT are critical infrastructure the earth simply cannot are living without, King observed that faculties didn’t truly train technologies past the essentials.

As for cyber safety – there was even less for students to discover.

He did some casting about and found out CyberTitan – the Canadian nationwide pupil cybersecurity level of competition, an arm of the international CyberPatriot competitors.

The worries learners confront in the competition are very much the challenges dealing with federal government, marketplace, academia and exploration and King’s learners have cleaned up at the CyberTitan competitions. 

Joining the competition routinely designed the university element of Cisco’s Networking Academy as they properly trained for level of competition. 

In 2018, King made a Network Academy at the faculty and began integrating the quite a few cost-free courses out there into the curriculum.

King himself took some classes supplied by the Cisco Networking Academy that have enriched his know-how and qualify him to be a cyber functions teacher. 

King noticed that while several ladies compete in Techniques competitions in Quality 8, a lot of go away from technological know-how in significant university. 

He was established to start a girls’ group at the 2019 CyberTitan opposition. 

“When my son was in Grade 8, 80 for every cent of rivals at the Lego robotics level of competition have been girls but in superior university, I experienced no women in my senior tech class. They slide out of it in higher university,” King claimed.

“I experienced some Quality 9 ladies in my class, and I begged them to come back in Quality 10. Then I persuaded them to consider CyberTitans.”

The high school’s girls’, boys’ and co-ed teams are persistently among the the best 5 finishers at CyberTitan and have long gone on to compete internationally.

And a couple of college students have long gone on to research engineering at university and acquire cybersecurity roles in the workplace. 

“This all goes to clearly show that even in the most not likely sites, with regular assist and powerful use of technological know-how assisted discovering, we can establish earth-course data and communications technological innovation and cybersecurity abilities,” King said.

It also shows you can educate an aged doggy new tips. 

Now in his 50s, with all his new instruction, King has been seconded by the Information and facts and Communications Technologies Council for two yrs to promote CyberTitan and cybersecurity studying options for pupils nationally. 

He travels the country conference with teachers and students, conveying the competitions, the discovering demanded to compete, and encouraging college students of all genders to participate. 

His secondment is split this yr with the Quantum Algorithms Institute where he will be innovating again, generating new understanding prospects for pupils of all backgrounds aimed at the quantum computing revolution on the horizon. 

“Even even though every single school in Canada depends on details and interaction know-how (ICT) and the cybersecurity that enables it, really few schools train it,” King said.

“Finding resources to teach a subject that isn’t on most curriculums is a obstacle, but one I just take extremely severely simply because ICT and cybersecurity are now the bedrock on which a lot of of our vital infrastructures rely.”

King said several of the cybersecurity breaches we go through about in the news are the result of human error and a deficiency of pc literacy.

“If we can educate people, which is the fix,” he reported.