Digital technologies / Year 3 and 4 / Digital Technologies Processes and Production Skills

Curriculum content descriptions

Explain how student solutions and existing information systems meet common personal, school or community needs (ACTDIP012)

Elaborations
  • investigating how information systems are used in communities and explaining what needs are being met, for example students jointly creating a short survey and collecting data about how many community residents use the online library borrowing system to download e-books and why they do or do not
  • imagining and considering alternative uses and opportunities for information systems used in the classroom, for example visiting a virtual museum and being able to feel the texture of historical Asian objects or to view Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artworks
  • exploring information systems that suit particular home or personal needs, for example using speech recognition software that can help speakers whose language background is not English, or a system to monitor energy or water consumption in the home
  • testing the adequacy of student solutions, for example asking a classmate to review a digital solution and provide feedback
General capabilities
  • Literacy Literacy
  • Critical and creative thinking Critical and creative thinking
  • Personal and social capability Personal and social capability
  • ICT capability Information and Communication Technology (ICT) capability
ScOT terms

Information management,  Design

Interactive

Design thinking across the curriculum

This cross-curriculum resource is designed to introduce Stage 2, 3 and 4 students to the design thinking process through a series of videos and interactive activities. This resource is also downloadable as a SCORM file: the downloaded version will only work if you upload it to a webserver, such as Moodle or Canvas.

Online

Intro to programming

This is a unit for Year 3 from the Scope and sequence resources from the DT Hub. The topic of algorithms and programming is organised into four key elements. Use this flow of activities to plan and assess students against the relevant achievement standards. Students follow the problem solving process to design and create ...

Online

Programming projects

This is a unit for Year 4 from the Scope and sequence resources from the DT Hub. The topic of programming is organised into four key elements. Use this flow of activities to plan and assess students against the relevant achievement standards. Students develop an understanding of computer programming as a series of instructions.

Online

Communicate ideas and information

This is a unit for Year 3 from the Scope and sequence resources from the DT Hub. The topic of managing a project and communicating online is organised into four key elements. Use this flow of activities to plan and assess students against the relevant achievement standards. Students manage a project and follow the problem ...

Online

Rubbish recording and reduction: Part 1

In this lesson sequence students survey and collect data concerning what is brought to school each day and subsequently becomes rubbish. They then use Excel to represent that data in a variety of different ways.

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ACARA sample assessment task: years 3-4: Classifying living or non-living things

This resource provides strategies for assessing aspects of the Digital Technologies subject in the Australian Curriculum that relate to data using contexts from other learning areas and General Capabilities, including Science, Mathematics, Numeracy and Literacy. The resource includes an assessment planner and rubric, as ...

Video

Activities that promote Digital Technologies concepts and incorporate Numeracy: part 3: Compass rose

This video provides suggestions for ways in which Digital Technologies can be used to develop students' learning in the Numeracy Learning Progression.

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Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies key concepts mapping: years 3-4

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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Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies years 3-4 Digital Systems sample assessment task: Cooling the school

This document provides a scaffold to teach and assess students’ understanding of how digital systems can be used to monitor and collect information used for mapping and making judgements about the environment. Students record information using digital systems to investigate a school need, then design solutions to improve ...

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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 ...

Video

Expert webinar video: Professor Tim Bell – Computational thinking

In this video, Professor Tim Bell discusses helpful ways of understanding and teaching computational thinking, a key idea of the Australian Curriculum: Technologies.

Video

Activities that promote Digital Technologies concepts and incorporate Numeracy: part 6: Using literature as a springboard to Numeracy and Digital Technologies

This video provides suggestions for ways in which Digital Technologies can be used to develop students' learning in the Literacy and Numeracy Learning Progressions.

Online

Automated soil moisture sensor

The soil moisture sensor project integrates science understandings and computational thinking to solve a problem about sustainable watering practices. This lesson was devised by Trudy Ward, Clarendon Vale Primary School, Tasmania.

Online

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.

Online

Agreeing to an ICT agreement

Students work together to brainstorm the dangers, problems and pitfalls in using ICT and online spaces. They collaboratively agree upon a set of protocols and rules for using technology, and develop processes and procedures to follow when using ICT.

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Scratch 2.0 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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Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies: years 3-4

This PDF provides a line of sight from content descriptions to achievement standards.

Online

Rubbish recording and reduction: Part 2

In this lesson sequence students use Excel to represent data in a variety of ways.

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Makey Makey interactive poster: years 3-4

This PDF provides instructions for students to create an interactive poster using a Makey Makey and the visual programming language Scratch. A Makey Makey is an electronic circuit board, which, when connected to a computer, allows everyday objects to function as keyboards.

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Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies Years 3–4 assessment task: Living and non-living things booklet

This PDF is a booklet that accompanies the years 3-4 assessment task, Classifying living and non-living things.