Welcome to The Encryption

Teacher Resources

The Encryption is a custom-designed problem-solving game, focussed on providing a fun and relevant digital challenge to support the cybersecurity curriculum!

Students will in their teams:

  • Develop their problem-solving skills

  • Practice approaching problems from different angles

  • Evaluate options as a group

  • Communicate and make informed decisions as a team, and

  • Hopefully have a lot of fun while learning!

Lesson plan for a 50 minute session

  1. Set up the classroom

Students will need to be in teams of around 5.

They will need at least one device per team, however each student having their own device is preferable.

It’s good if students are clustered together so that there is as much space as possible between teams, to avoid overhearing.

2. Brief the students on the activity

You can use these slides to explain the activity to the students.

They include a short, 5 minute team activity where students decide on a team name.

They will need to enter their name to access the game.

The slides cover:

  1. The schedule for the activity

  2. The rules of the game

  3. The main problem the students need to solve

  4. Some tips for students to do well

Approx 10 minutes, including 5 minute team activity.

2. Share the player link with the teams

This will be available here from 7 September.

You can just copy the link from your browser and share it digitally with the students.

There are no passwords or sign on necessary.

Students just need to type in their team name to get started.

3. Support the students while they play (as needed)

Approx 40 minutes playing time

We’ve provided you with an Answer Guide, in case you need to give students tips or hints while they are playing.

It will make the most sense in the context of the questions in the player link.

Once students have all the answers, or the time for the session has run out, they should submit their answers all at once. Only one student per team needs to submit the answers on behalf of their team.

They will get a confirmation screen with the text “Thank you for playing!” when their answers have been submitted correctly.

The answers and winning teams will be announced after the playing period ends at the end of September.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Only one student per team needs to submit the answers on behalf of their team.

  • No, each team will have one opportunity to submit their final answers. They will not need to submit any of their individual answers to the puzzles until the very end, so they will have plenty of time to revise them during the game.

  • Teams of 5 or 6 students are best for a 40 minute game.

  • Whilst it’s part of the fun for students to figure out the questions on their own, we also don’t want any teams to feel stuck or get too off track. That’s why we have given you the answer guide and some tips you can give them to help if they are struggling.

  • Each team will need at least one device to view and submit the puzzles, however it is better if each player has access to their own device.

    It is good if each team is seated together, with a little distance from other teams (room permitting) so that there is less chance of them overhearing each other discussing the answers.

  • Absolutely, in fact, for some puzzles it is recommended! There are no resources that are off-limits, and many answers can be found with a quick Google search.

  • Encourage students to submit what they have at the end of the game time, even if they don’t have all of them. The game is based on speed as well as accuracy, so they could still have done well! They will need to write something in each answer field to be able to submit- if they don’t know, they can just write “don’t know” or their best guess.

Good luck and happy playing!

The answers and the winning teams will be announced by video after the playing period ends at the end of September 🥇🥈🥉