The
Junior Secondary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aspirations Program (ATSIAP) State Final Challenge has begun.
ATSIAP is an academic challenge that provides high-performing Aboriginal students and Torres Strait Islander students in Years 7 to 12 with the opportunity to develop their critical and creative thinking skills through solving real-life problems.
The program actively encourages students to complete senior schooling, supports aspirations for tertiary education, builds team work, increases competitiveness, and strengthens the link between school and university. It also gives students the opportunity to explore their own identities and that of their community.
The Junior Secondary ATSIAP State Final Challenge commenced on 25 July 2022 and will run for six weeks.
The challenge titled #ProtectingKnowledge is themed around cryptography and its use in cybersecurity to protect sensitive information, drawing on the traditional knowledge and practices of Aboriginal people in the use of message sticks to encode messages.
Teams of students will explore the fundamentals of cybersecurity and the role of cryptography in protecting information communication technologies for the community. In particular, teams will learn about the offence and defence against different ciphers, and apply the learned techniques to solve a series of weekly online tasks.
Students will be supported by Griffith University experts and PhD students from the School of Information and Communication Technology as they decode and encode information to complete the online tasks each week, and to create a message stick.
Each team will present their challenge responses on Tuesday 13 September 2022 by live-stream through the department's Blackboard Collaborate online platform. The presentations will be judged and the 2022 ATSIAP Awards Ceremony will be held online on Thursday 15 September.
For more information, or to find out how to get involved in 2023, contact
atsiap@qed.qld.gov.au or 07 3513 5812.