Have my bronze cyber course tomorrow, it’s my first course outside of usual parade nights, so I have absolutely no idea what to expect. People who have experience with the course, what should I be expecting?
It is a fairly straightforward cyber safety course with some practical elements. You don’t need any technical computer skills.
Depending on how the directing staff run it, there will be individual or group research activities. Get stuck in and give these your best effort as they are the most enjoyable part of the course.
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Don’t Panic (in big friendly letters).
Make sure you’ve read any joining instructions and you arrive on time. Bring a pen and paper, and an enthusiastic attitude.
As @WestlandScout has said, the course itself is nothing to worry about. You’ll meet some new people (many of whom will likely be in the same position), and hopefully learn something new.
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Giving away either your age or liking for British sci fi there
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Just finished, it went pretty well, lol. Should be getting my badge next Tuesday. Thanks for all of the posts.
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Well done. The Silver IDEA is enjoyable and the OU element doesn’t take long. My challenge for you (and for anyone completing the bronze requirements) is to see if you can now complete the silver elements before your bronze badge arrives.
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Managed to finish my silver 2 weeks after the post. Got my bronze badge last week and my certificates have been sent off to region. Not sure if it counts, but I tried, lol.
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Nicely done
Keep an eye on here when the Advanced courses go live, usually in late April each year, and considering you already have Silver you could very easily bag your gold badge.
It’s not horribly difficult and there are quite a lot of spaces compared to the internal RAFAC Gold courses (especially if you’re female or non-binary as there are priority places for them) as it is a national scheme entirely outside of the RAFAC, we just accredit it at Gold level.
It’s free to attend as government subsidised (they may even still be doing hybrid courses this year, I’m not sure), and they even give you a box of goodies! I did it a while back and it’s good fun, interactive lessons with some labs thrown in to test your skills, culminating in a group CTF challenge.
Cyberfirst Advanced Courses | Smallpeice Trust
Do consider it! If you have MOI you can then also assess and teach Bronze Cyber.
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It’s still a requirement to attend a train the trainer to deliver Bronze Cyber (the latest change was Cadets can now do so, previously it was staff cadets or CFAV.)
I thought you could only take that route for gold if you did your silver that way? They may have changed it though and I’ve not seen the update
Nope, you can only do the RAFAC CyberFirst Advanced course if you did the RAFAC CyberFirst Silver level course but if you do CyberFirst Advanced outside of the RAFAC - i.e. through the smallpeice trust - it doesn’t matter how you got your silver badge, as long as you do have it. So I did the Open University module and iDEA for my silver, then did smallpeice trust CyberFirst Advanced for Gold.
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Fair enough. I misunderstood that then.
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Yes you will still need to attend a train the trainer course (which aren’t happening anymore) and run a supervised course before being able to run one by yourself. This applies to staff and cadets who have been on the gold course.