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

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

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 ...

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

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.

Text

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

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.

Text

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.

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.

Online

Rubbish recording and reduction: Part 2

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

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.

Text

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.

Text

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 ...

Text

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.

Text

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.

Text

Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies: years 3-4

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

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.

Online

Create a board game that uses an Ozobot

Create a game board where the player is provided with a number of decisions. Using Scratch and Makey Makey, students add multimodal elements to the story. These elements are activated using an Ozobot.

Online

Note the music

We can program a computer to play music. Conventionally this is done by hard coding, which is the process of coding all possible expected behaviours. Alternatively, we can train an artificial intelligence (AI) computer about what notes go well with others, so it can play a duet with a human musician. Students can make their ...

Online

Design a quiz - Convicts: crime and punishment

Students design and create a simple game/quiz to demonstrate convict crimes and punishments.

Online

Fun projects with language translation

Natural language processing is growing in importance. We often converse with automatic chatbots for customer service without even knowing. We also use online translation services or mobile apps. But how do these services work? Is there artificial intelligence (AI) in them? Three projects are offered to cater for student ...