PyCon AU 2025

Edwin Griffin

Edwin began teaching IT in the Senior Secondary Sector of the ACT in 2014. Since then he has used a variety of languages and platforms for delivery, from Basic, to C# and most recently Python. Starting at Gungahlin College in 2014 and overseeing the school's IT program when it had the highest number of IT enrolments of any secondary college in the ACT, he now works at Burgmann Anglican School and continues his emphasis on student led, project based learning.

Edwin manages multiple workshops throughout the year to help support local schools' education of IT, provide students with industry connections, and allow local industries to see what the students are capable of. He believes that IT is an incredible tool that can be combined with a variety of passions to create unique and world changing projects. If all students are taught IT foundations, in addition to the problem solving skills and knowledge they’ll acquire, it will open a range of possibilities that they may never have thought of.


What pronouns do you use?:

He/Him


Session

09-12
11:40
30min
Capturing Flags with Microbits
Edwin Griffin

After a number of my Year 10 students entered a capture the flag cybersecurity competition they had a sudden burst of enthusiasm for the topic. Networking and cybersecurity, being parts of the national curriculum, are things that I should probably be teaching anyway so when it came to delivering this unit I figured I'd capture their enthusiam by running my assessment as a capture the flag. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but as it turns out CTFs take quite a bit of effort - and getting a system like the micro:bit to reliably immitate a network a bit of work. Also creating a scenario where students don't just troll each other in the middle of an exam when... also figuring out how to stop them cheating when their communication is open... also figuring out a way to teach them everything they needed to know in order to even approach the task... also how do I learn all this stuff first?

Join me as I go through the five weeks I spent learning, delivering and then assessing cybersecruity things.
I'll be overviewing what I had to teach to get them ready, what I had to code on the micro:bits to make any of this work, and ultimately ask: how effective is it to run a capture the flag using Micro:bits.

Education
Ballroom 3