The cyber warriors of tomorrow have been getting a head start in Savannah over the past week.

For the second year in a row, Armstrong State University is hosting a cyber-security camp for local middle and high school students. The weeklong course, part of a U.S. Air Force Association program, lets rising eighth- through 12th-graders learn basic skills that can give them a leg up when looking for work in a rapidly expanding industry.

Participants get a crash course in cyber safety, ethics and criminal network security skills and tools.

"There's a lot of stuff that we do on a daily basis with our computers and our smartphones, but we don't know what we're doing or why we just do it," said Scott Scheidt, director of Armstrong's Center for Applied Cyber Education.

As an example, Scheidt referenced the routine act of going into a computer's control panel to uninstall a program.

"What we're doing is showing them all those other things on the control panel and what it does - how to set up accounts, how to secure the accounts, how to set up file permissions and do password and secure the network and how you set these things up," he said.

The first session wraps Friday, but Armstrong is partnering with Oglethorpe Charter School for a second camp in July. The cost is $250 per camper, but there are scholarship opportunities and the possibility of earning professional certifications.

There's particular interest in Georgia in workers with computer know-how as the U.S. Army relocates its Cyber Command headquarters to Fort Gordon near Augusta

"The cyber workforce relies a little more heavily on guaranteed skill validation and life experience or work experience, so just walking out of high school with an actual industry certification and a couple years of even summertime on-the-job training type experience would prepare them for a potential job at least at an entry level that some people have to wait until college to get with an actual degree," Scheidt said.

A lot of the learning is fairly intuitive, especially for kids who have never lived without constant access to computers.

"Based on how well you understand the world you live in, you would be surprised how much you can pull together in 72 hours," Scheidt said.

The students spend the first four days learning basic skills. Then, on the last day, they're given a problem to solve, acting as members of a junior IT administration team. The teams compete to see who can most efficiently fix problems and improve security on a network.

The team in third place walks away with one scholarship for a certification, the team in second place with two, and the first place winners with three. The certifications are valid for three years, so they could be a boon for cyber campers who are about to graduate high school and start college.

"They could spend those first three years of their college actually using those skills to help defer student loan debt cost," Scheidt said, adding that a person with a high school education and similar certificates could find relevant work starting about $40,000 per year due to shortages in the cyber security industry.

Schedit says there are still about a dozen spots open for the second camp, which is being held July 17-21 at Oglethorpe Charter School. Students who are enrolled in specialized STEM - or science, technology, math and engineering - programs may have an easier time, but everyone is welcome.

"It's really about aptitude, desire and will to learn," he said.

Nine students took part at the first session at Armstrong, the youngest being 13.

One of them, Richmond Hill High senior Brenden Campbell, said the camp gave him some ideas and helped affirm his college plans.

"I have an interest in computers and engineering - I just didn't know where to go," Campbell, 18, said.

On Wednesday, Campbell and others learned about the Linux operating system, which is something he plans to study further. He also got some tips on how to access computers remotely - a skill often used by workplace IT professionals.

"I thought that would be really useful for my grandfather, because he has problems sometimes," Campbell said.