Blue Belt: Networking & Cybersecurity
Networking & Cybersecurity in Wellesley
How networks actually work, and how they are broken into.
- Boston Parents Family Favorite seven years running
- Macaroni Kids Favorite 2026
- FIRST LEGO League & VEX Judges Award
- State finalists, FLL & VEX
- STEM.org accredited
- CSTA & NGSS aligned
Not a drop-in coding club. A ten-month program with a cohort, a competition team, and a monthly report that shows you exactly what your child built and why it mattered.
What your child leaves with
A portfolio
Working apps, games, robots and websites they built themselves — not a certificate of attendance. Everything is saved to their own profile.
A team
The route into our VEX and FIRST LEGO League competition teams, with a real season, a capped roster and tournament results.
A transcript
A written report every month explaining what they covered, the concept behind it, and what comes next. A fuller one at the end of each belt.
Blue Belt · iCode of Wellesley2026/27 year
Networking & Cybersecurity — the Blue Belt
- Time
- Two hours a week, same day and time, across the ten-month program
- Group size
- Around six students to one instructor
- Length
- Ten months to complete a belt. Most students go on to the next one. 80 hours of instruction across the year.
- Start dates
- New cohorts in September, November, January and April. Seats are capped.
- Stage
- Typically ages 12 and up
- Entry
- Advanced. Assumes real programming experience.
- Reports
- A written report every month, and a fuller one at the end of each belt — see a real one
- Location
- 73 Central Street, Wellesley
See Blue Belt class times
Book a free evaluation
Not sure this is the right belt? The free evaluation exists to answer exactly that — we place by what a student can do, never by age alone.
This is the belt parents did not know to ask for and the one students talk about most. Linux, the shell, IP addressing, routing, the client-server model — the machinery under everything else they have built, finally visible.
Then security: how systems are attacked, why they fail, and what defending one actually involves. It runs through hackathons rather than lectures, and finishes in embedded systems and IoT, where the network meets physical hardware.
What students actually learn
- BASH and Python on Linux — the command line as a working tool
- The OSI and TCP/IP models, IP addressing and routing
- Information and web security — attack and defense
- System administration and virtualization
- Blockchain, IoT and embedded systems
The year, sprint by sprint
The Blue Belt runs in sprints across the school year, each one building on the last and ending in a final project.
- Networking Foundations with Linux
- Systems & Web Security
- Information Security
- Hackathon Fundamentals
- Mini-Hackathons
- Blockchain
- IoT
- Embedded Systems
- Final Project
What they finish with
- Complex embedded projects using Arduino
- Hackathon work under time pressure
You will know exactly what your child learned
Most parents six weeks into a coding class cannot say what their child has actually learned. A written report arrives every month: the topics covered, the concept behind each one in plain language, what your child actually built, where they found it easy and where they had to push, an instructor’s specific observation, and what is coming next. At the end of the belt there is a longer completion report — the whole ten months as a narrative, the skills portfolio, the capstone, and the natural next step.
The competition team runs alongside it
Our VEX and FIRST LEGO League teams are not a separate Saturday activity. A team place runs parallel to the belt, so the season feeds the same progress record — the robot goes in the portfolio and the season goes on the transcript. Rosters are capped and we hold the cap.
- Entry — FIRST LEGO League Explore · VEX IQ intro. Grades 2–4, About 16 weeks, 1.5 hours a week.
- Core — FIRST LEGO League Challenge · VEX IQ competitive. Grades 4–8, About 20 weeks, two hours a week.
- Advanced — VEX V5. Grades 8–12, About 20 weeks, two hours a week, eight students to one coach.
A place is conditional on being an enrolled student, and tryouts run in September. See the teams, rosters and season dates.
The question parents actually ask
“Are you teaching my child to hack?”
We teach how attacks work, because you cannot defend a system you do not understand — that is how every security course for adults is built too. It is taught with the ethics attached, in a supervised center, on our own equipment. The students who take this belt tend to be the ones who end up securing things for a living.
If it is not working
Four sessions — about a month — then decide.
If your child is not engaged after four sessions, tell us and we refund the balance and release the seat.
How this differs from a club
A club is one hour a week for ten weeks, in a larger group, on a single topic — a good way to start and a good second activity. The Belt Program is two hours a week across a ten-month year, in a group of about six, with a written progress report every month and a capstone project. It is the deeper commitment and the one most families end up in. See the clubs if you would rather start smaller.
If two hours a week is too much right now
Studio — One hour a week, ongoing. A flexible, AI-driven path with its own milestones, supervised by an instructor. The on-ramp for families who cannot give us two hours a week yet. Students move across to a belt when they are ready. It is a different product rather than a shorter belt, which is what keeps the belt itself meaning the same thing for every student who finishes one.
Questions
Is this too niche to be useful?
It is the least contested and best-paid corner of the field, and almost nothing locally teaches it to under-eighteens. It also makes students noticeably better at every other kind of programming, because they finally see what the code is running on.
Does my child need Linux experience?
No. The first sprint is networking foundations with Linux from the ground up. They do need real prior programming experience — this is not a first belt.
What are the hackathons?
Short, time-boxed builds against a brief, run in teams. They are the closest thing we run to professional conditions.
Where you’ll be
iCode of Wellesley · 73 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02482
781-291-3131
Five minutes from Wellesley Middle School and a short drive from Schofield, Bates, Hardy, Hunnewell and Upham. Street parking on Central Street, plus the Municipal Way lot behind the building for pickup.
Ready to start?
Book a free evaluation and we will tell you honestly which belt your child belongs in — or go straight to the Blue Belt class times.
Book a free evaluation
See Blue Belt class times
The ten belts, in order
Students move up the ladder as they are ready, not on a timetable. Most join partway up — the free evaluation is how we work out where.
- Junior Belt — Junior STEAM
- Foundation Belt — Scratch Coding & AI Foundations
- White Belt — Robotics, VEX & 3D Printing
- Gray Belt — Minecraft & Roblox Coding
- Orange Belt — Web Development & Design
- Yellow Belt — Mobile App Development
- Green Belt — Python, Drones & AI
- Red Belt — Game Development
- Blue Belt — Networking & Cybersecurity — you are here
- Black Belt — Java & AP Computer Science
