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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Create an app or game

This is a unit for Year 7 from the Scope and sequence resources from the DT Hub. The topic of creating a digital solution 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 ...

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Design thinking

Find out about Design thinking. Use this topic from the Digital Technologies Hub to learn more, get ideas about how to teach about it, find out what other schools are doing and use the applications and games in the classroom.

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Robotics and embedded systems

This is a unit for Year 8 from the Scope and sequence resources from the DT Hub. The topic of creating a digital solution 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 ...

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Computational thinking

Find out about Computational thinking. Use this topic from the Digital Technologies Hub to learn more, get ideas about how to teach about it, find out what other schools are doing and use the applications and games in the classroom.

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Computational thinking poster

This infographic provides an overview overview of the concepts related to computational thinking.

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DTiF Classroom Exploring AI in the Classroom: Activity discussion

Digital Technologies in Focus curriculum officers discuss a lesson about Artificial Intelligence with Simon Collier and a student.

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Data knowledge and skills tutorial: part 3 - structuring data in a spreadsheet

This video demonstrates ways in which data can be structured in spreadsheets. It is the third in a series of four.

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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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Lockwood & Mooney review: Computational thinking

This article provides a literature review of how computational thinking fits into a school curriculum. The aim of the report is to provide educators with an overview of the current research in this field and the work that is being done in teaching computational thinking.

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DTiF in conversation with Save the Bilby Fund – Background information on the Save the Bilby Fund

Kevin Bradley, CEO of Save the Bilby Fund, and Cassandra Arkinstall, a researcher and volunteer at Save the Bilby Fund, explain why the bilby is an important indicator of the health of an ecosystem, and how their decline impacts other wildlife. This video gives an overview of what the Save the Bilby Fund does as they work ...

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

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

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Creating a digital start line and finish line with micro:bits: years 7-8

This PDF provides a sequence of activities in which students create algorithms to measure the time taken for a vehicle to travel from a starting line to a finish line. Students connect micro:bits and laser receiver sensors to measure time, then create programs to undertake the timing using visual and general-purpose programming.

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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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Expert webinar video: Nathan Alison, Digital Learning and Teaching Victoria (DLTV): Focus on systems thinking. How do we teach it well?

Nathan Alison from Digital Learning and Teaching Victoria (DLTV) explains what systems thinking is and how it is used in the context of Digital Technologies. Nathan explains what we need to consider when teaching digital systems, covering topics such as networks, hardware and software protocols, people and processes.

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Book analysis with AI techniques

This learning sequence explores text analysis through Natural Language Processing, a significant application of Artificial Intelligence. Teachers and students are led through a series of video tutorials to develop a Python program that can break down and analyse the content of a complete text and use smart sentiment analysis ...

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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 ...

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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.

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Turtles: impact of climate change on Flatback turtle populations

The lesson follows an inquiry process in which students use a dataset to answer relevant questions about the turtle population. They consider how to analyse and display the data in order to effectively examine the impact of rising global temperatures on flatback turtle populations.

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AI image recognition - exploring limitations and bias

A hands-on activity to practise training and testing an artificial intelligence (AI) model, using cartoon faces, including a discussion about sources of potential algorithmic bias and how to respond to these sources.

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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.