Saturday 27 October 2018

Code Breakers

Here are a few things we did... This Week In Gifted!

Deciphering When You Don't Have The Key

KYV JKLUVEKJ RIV XVKKZEX MVIP XFFU RK UVTIPGKZEX TRVJRI TZGYVIJ.  JFDV FW KYVD YRMV VMVE JKRIKVU UVTZGYVIZEX BVPNFIU TZGYVIJ!  BVPNFIU TZGYVIJ RIV R KNZJK FE TRVJRI TZGYVIJ REU SFKY RIV DFEFRCGYRSVKZT JLSJKZKLKZFE TZGYVIJ.  NYFR!  KIP JRPZEX KYRK KVE KZDVJ WRJK!  ZW PFL'MV UVTZGYVIVU KYZJ DVJJRXV, NRP KF XF!

Do you understand the text above?  Using the Crack a Caesar Cipher tool on the Cryptoclub.org website, as well as an understanding of letter frequencies, all of the students this week got practice deciphering long messages encrypted with the Caesar Cipher.  Interested in trying to crack the message above?  Just copy it, open up the  Crack a Caesar Cipher tool (you may have to enable Flash) and paste the text into the 'CIPHERTEXT' window.  Use the 'Letter Frequencies' button to help you to decide where to set the cipher wheel.  Then in the 'plaintext' window enter the first 3 deciphered letters and press the 'Decrypt' button.  If you get gobbledygook, then you didn't set the wheel to the correct key.  Delete the plaintext and reset the wheel to a different spot (based on letter frequencies).

Wednesday afternoon code breakers.

Kids on the Radio

We also listened to part of this interview.  It was conducted and produced by elementary students at Brant Avenue Public School in Guelph, Ontario.

Each week we've been talking about radio, and for the past two weeks we've listened to samples of radio created by kids.  All this in preparation for creating our own radio show!

Thanks for stopping by to see what we've been up to.


Saturday 20 October 2018

Caesar Cipher

Here are a few of the things that students did... This Week In Gifted!

The Caesar Cipher

We continued to learn more about the Caesar Cipher.  Students made their own cipher wheels and learned how to encipher and decipher messages with specific shifts (for example, a shift of one means that a = B, b = C, c = D etc, while a shift of 3 means that a = D etc.)  When it comes to deciphering messages, students identified tips to speed up the process such as; take good guesses when a word is partially deciphered and for longer messages decipher all of the instances of the same letter at the same time.

If you haven't been told what the shift is, sometimes you can figure it out by looking at the short words; this is especially helpful if there are any 1 letter words in your message as they will probably represent the words "a" or "I".  What if there are no 1 or 2 letter words in your message?  Some of the classes learned about analyzing letter frequencies.  The most frequently used letters in the English language are e, t, a, o and i.  If the most frequently used letter in the enciphered message is a K, perhaps it represents one of those four letters?

The Wednesday afternoon group hard at work with their cipher wheels.


All this enciphering and deciphering of messages can be time consuming (and makes some of us go a little cross-eyed).  If only there was a way to speed up the process...  this is where computers come in!  The students were introduced to the Crypto Club website; a great resource designed for kids to teach them about the world of cryptography.  We investigated some of the different tools they have to help you encrypt and decrypt Caesar Cipher messages.


Radio

We also talked a little more about radio this week; where do we listen to radio? what sorts of things can you hear on the radio? and what would kids like to hear on the radio?  Later this year we will be producing a radio show, so we'll be exploring topics related to radio most weeks.

Fun in the Sun

One of the perks that the Wednesday morning class has is that we get to have recess together and we usually have the whole playground to ourselves!  So I'll leave you with a few images from this week's recess.  



Thanks for dropping by to see what we've been up to.

Thursday 11 October 2018

Top Secret Communication!

Well, you've probably heard the news by now.  This year's theme is... (drumroll please)




The students did a great job of figuring out the clues and tying things together.

Clue 1: the weird beeping sound in the 'Welcome Back' video
Most students realized it was a form of communication with many recognizing that it was Morse Code or a binary code (dots = 0 and dashes = 1s).  Kudos to the students who went above and beyond and decoded the message which said "This is Morse Code"!

Clue 2: the Far Side cartoon of the man trying to find out what language the duck spoke
This has to do with the idea of language as one of the key ways that humans communicate.

Clue 3: the 'Theme! Theme! Theme!' radio ad
Many students thought that the person voicing the ad sounded like me, which is crazy of course, but I took it as a compliment.  The relevance of this clue will be seen later.

Clue 4: the garbled message
We all agreed that this was not another language, rather it was an enciphered message.  Some students pointed out that the message used a lot of letters that we don't frequently use in English.  We looked for patterns in the message and students noticed that WKHPH! showed up many times, often three times in a row, and deduced that it was the word theme!  So t is replaced by W, h is replaced by K etc.  Then we noticed that the top line in the message DXJXVW 31VW, 2018 was probably the date.  Another student noted that the letters were all shifted by 3 places.  Holy cow!  (or should I say KROB FRZ!)   We're well on the way to deciphering the message.  In fact, three students deciphered the entire message on their own before our class had our first meeting!  Way to go Noah, Meghan and Rowyn!

Clue 5: 'This Week in Radio History' mini documentary
The mini documentary mentioned the importance of radio in World War II, in particular it mentioned the coded messages that were sent to members of the French Resistance via BBC's Radio London.

So what will we be learning about this year?
  • Communication in general, including:
    • languages
    • communication devices
    • verbal and non-verbal communication
  • Secret Communication, including:
    • codes
    • ciphers
    • methods of decryption
    • steganography (hidden messages)
  • Radio
    • how radio works
    • recording and editing audio
    • interview techniques
    • we will be producing our own radio show!  
After reviewing the clues and revealing the theme for this year we got down to business!  Students learned how to encipher and decipher messages using a Caesar Cipher.  Students put their new skills to work creating enciphered words or messages for their peers to decipher. 

Enciphering and deciphering messages using the Caesar Cipher.  

We also had a little fun with non-verbal communication with some of the classes playing the charades game Heads Up or doing an emotion walk (communicating different emotions while walking around the classroom.)

Thanks for taking the time to read about what we did... This Week In Gifted!

Tuesday 9 October 2018

A Moment in Radio History

Please check out the animation below.  Make sure that your audio is turned on (but not too loud!) and press the green flag and then the play button.  It's a flash animation so you may have to allow flash on your browser.  If it doesn't show up below, try this link.  If it still doesn't work, don't panic, we'll watch it in class.






Tuesday 2 October 2018

Well This Is Confusing

If you read the previous post (here) you'll know that we left off with me waiting breathlessly to hear back from 'Theme! Theme! Theme!'  Well, I didn't have to wait for long.  A few days after filling in their questionnaire I received a letter with the following message:

DXJXVW 31VW, 2018

GHDU PV. WKRPSVRQ,
WKDQN BRX IRU FRQWDFWLQJ WKHPH! WKHPH! WKHPH!  EDVHG RQ ZKDW BRX WROG XV DERXW BRXU FODVV, ZH IHHO WKDW ZH KDYH MXVW WKH WKHPH IRU BRX, LW'V FDOOHG: 'WRS VHFUHW FRPPXQLFDWLRQ'
EHVW RI OXFN!
VLQFHUHOB,
SDW WKHPHRSROLV
WKHPH! WKHPH! WKHPH! DGYLVR



Yup, as clear as mud!  I tried to get in touch with the company, but when I went to their website, which I had been to just a couple of days earlier, this is what I got:


  

My first thought was "Great, I guess I'm on my own."  But now I realize that I'm not on my own -- maybe YOU can help me!  I've set up another form you can fill out if you have ideas about the message from 'Theme! Theme! Theme!'  Any ideas are appreciated!  Please note: I do not expect you to be able to solve this message!  The idea is to take some guesses as to what is going on. 
 









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