YOU TRAINED IT. NOW BEAT IT.
A free classroom activity on artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity
Created by Michael Banks (michaelbanks.org) | Version 1.0, November 2026


WHAT STUDENTS DO

Students become the security team for a fictional school festival. They train
a simple AI filter to sort event messages into LEGIT and SCAM, discover that it
learned a shortcut, and retrain it with counterexamples. Then they become the
red team and write fictional scams to beat it. A final message slips past the
model, and a trusted policy catches it.


AT A GLANCE

Time:        40-minute activity, or a 75-minute session with discussion
Group:       Designed for 20 students in five teams of four; adapts to
             other class sizes
Experience:  None required. No coding, student accounts, or internet.
Equipment:   Paper and pens, or a laptop and projector for the offline demo


WHAT IS IN THIS KIT

1. facilitator-guide.pdf   Start here. Both equipment plans, a minute-by-minute
                           run sheet, speaking prompts, printing instructions,
                           the answer key, and adaptation notes.
2. student-materials.pdf   Eight printable pages: trusted event sheet, message
                           cards, rule worksheet, red-team template, team
                           record, and voting ballots.
3. activity.html           Offline classroom demo. Open it in a desktop web
                           browser. It trains a small decision-tree model on
                           the labeled messages and makes no network requests.
4. facilitator-guide.md    Editable text of the facilitator guide.


QUICK START

1. Read facilitator-guide.pdf.
2. Print student-materials.pdf using the printing instructions in the guide.
3. If you have a projector, open activity.html once before class to rehearse.

All messages, names, and codes in this kit are fictional practice material.


USE AND SHARING

This kit is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0
International License (CC BY-NC 4.0):
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

You may copy, print, adapt, and share it for non-commercial purposes. Credit
Michael Banks, link to the license, and note any changes you make.
