(Genius Hour is a project in Digital Citizenship class in which the students are allowed to research their own subject for an entire class period every Day 1)

My topic for Genius Hour was Hacking, and more specifically, Ethical Hacking.

I originally chose the project because I wanted to use the internet and school technology for what I wanted, and not only what was asked of me. The reason for that would take an entire blog by itself, and it’s not really the point of my research, so moving on. That was my original question, which had to change because of my teacher’s beliefs concerning what qualifies as school appropriate. After some research, I found that there actually was a form of hacking that was considered legal, and that was ethical hacking. I could go on and on about what ethical hacking is all about, but here are some videos, all from TED TALKs, that summarize what it’s about and the values it stands for:

For those of you who don’t necessarily want to open those tabs, the shortened version is: ethical hackers protect digital media, like websites in which people put their credentials and important information that is meant to stay secret. Here is my presentation slide. There isn’t much information on it because most of the info was said out loud, but here ya go:

goo.gl/bsvhhp

I think this experience helped me grow personally because it made me realize that everything, no matter how bad it seems at first, can be used for good to help other people. The coding training I went through also helped me understand Javascript and HTML much better.

This particular Genius Hour didn’t really help impact the outside world directly, but it could be used to impact it. I could theoretically use the skills I acquired during this Genius Hour to become a certified ethical hacker in the future and help protect people’s information on the Internet, but I have other prospects in mind.

I think it’s quite sad that all this Genius Hour is being wasted on something that I’ll probably forget in a couple of years, so I’m planning on having a more long-term project for the next Genius Hour.