Digital technologies / Year 7 and 8 / Digital Technologies Processes and Production Skills

Curriculum content descriptions

Define and decompose real-world problems taking into account functional requirements and economic, environmental, social, technical and usability constraints (ACTDIP027)

Elaborations
  • determining the factors that influence proposed solution ideas, for example user age affects the language used for instructions, dexterity affects the size of buttons and links, hearing or vision loss influence captioned or audio-described multimedia as alternative ways that common information is presented on a website
  • investigating types of environmental constraints of solutions, for example reducing energy consumption and on-screen output of solutions
  • identifying that problems can be decomposed into sub elements, for example creating a decision tree to represent the breakdown and relationships of sub elements to the main problem or identifying the elements of game design such as characters, movements, collisions and scoring
  • starting from a simplified system, gradually increase complexity until a model of a real-world system is developed, and record the difficulties associated with each stage of implementation
General capabilities
  • Literacy Literacy
  • Critical and creative thinking Critical and creative thinking
  • ICT capability Information and Communication Technology (ICT) capability
  • Ethical understanding Ethical understanding
Cross-curriculum priorities
ScOT terms

Information and communication technologies,  Problem solving,  Functionality,  Usability

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Computational thinking cut out cards

This set of printable cards provides definitions of six aspects of computational thinking.

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Voskoglou & Buckley review: Problem solving and computational thinking

This article explores the relationship between computational and critical thinking as it applies to solving technological problems. Research evidence derived from classroom experiments strongly suggests that using computers to solve problems enhances students’ abilities in solving real-world problems involving mathematical ...

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Faith Lutheran College – – Final report

This report provides details of Faith Lutheran College's participation in the Digital Technologies in Focus project, including a Research question, criteria for success, data collection, resources, challenges, milestones and next steps.

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Faith Lutheran College – Timeline

This document presents the milestones in Faith Lutheran College's participation in the Digital Technologies in Focus project.

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Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies key concepts mapping: years 7-8

This PDF uses colour coding to provide a line of sight between key concepts, content descriptions and achievement standards in the Digital Technologies subject in the Australian Curriculum.

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Scratch 3.0 tutorial

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions to support the learning of Scratch, a visual programming language. The tutorial is designed for educators who would like to learn how to use Scratch.

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ACARA sample assessment task: years 7-8

This resource provides strategies for assessing students' understanding of the ways in which data can be sourced, organised and represented to maximise options for analysis, evaluation, decomposition and visualisation in order to create digital solutions. The context of the resource is the liveability of the places in which ...

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Faith Lutheran School

Faith Lutheran College is a secondary co-educational independent school in Plainland, Queensland. It has more than 700 students and was established in 1999. Sarah Atkins is the curriculum officer who works with the school to support implementation of the Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies. Teachers at the school ...

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Micro:bit missions: Take a chance on me (Integrating Mathematics): years 6-8

This resource comprises two activities that allow students to explore the concept of chance in Mathematics. Students use computational thinking while using a micro:bit as a digital system to generate and collect data. Students implement programs involving branching and iteration in visual and general-purpose programming languages.

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Classroom ideas: Micro:bit environmental measurement (visual and general-purpose programming): years 5-8

This tutorial shows ways in which environmental factors such as lighting and temperature can be measured and improved using micro:bits and sensor boards, and programmed using pseudocode, visual programming and general-purpose programming.

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Data knowledge and skills tutorial: part 4 - analysing and visualising data

This video demonstrates ways in which data can be analysed and visualised. It is the final in a series of four.

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Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies Years 7-8 Sample Assessment Task: Digital Systems

The Years 7-8 assessment task focuses on digital systems (integrating Digital Technologies and Science). The digital systems assessment task provides a scaffold to teach about and assess students’ understanding of how digital systems can be used to monitor the classroom learning environment. learn how to create environmental ...

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Rock, Paper, Scissors AI!

In this lesson we use the game rock, paper scissors to investigate how an AI can recognise your hand gestures. Firstly students create, train and test their own AI model. They import their AI model into a pre-made JavaScript program to modify the computer program to incorporate game play. The level of game play will depend ...

Downloadable

DT Challenge - 7/8 Python - Sport Micro:Bit

Use Python to program a micro:bit for sport! Get excited about coding even if you have no experience. You'll use the Python language to write your own programs, and make interactive games and tools to improve your health.

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Scratch Creative Computing Guide

There is also a series of units comprising learning activities, paired with assessment activities and templates that can be used to support use of the Scratch (MIT) platform. The Scratch Creative Computing Guide supports assessment activities with visual programming environments.

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Weather forecast from the stratosphere

This lesson sequence is designed to introduce students to data analysis using a spreadsheet such as MS Excel. The project is based on a real world problem and a real data set from a weather balloon launched in Australia earlier this year. The project consists of 5 lessons of variable length, each with a different focus. ...

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Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies Years 7–10 achievement standards and aligned content descriptions on a page

This PDF presents content descriptions and achievement standards for the Digital Technologies subject in the Australian Curriculum

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Faith Lutheran College – PL ecosystem

This document illustrates the network of people and resources that make up Faith Lutheran College's Professional Learning ecosystem.

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Faith Lutheran College – Project proposal

This PDF outlines Faith Lutheran College's proposal to participate in the Digital Technologies in Focus project.

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Project Quantum: Online assessment system

Project Quantum helps computing teachers check their students’ understanding, and support their progress, by providing free access to an online multiple-choice assessment system and question bank. To use Project Quantum, you will need to create a free account.