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Listed under:  Technologies  >  Design
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Learning environments

This sequence of lessons explores how conditions in the environment can impact on learning. Through investigating the environmental influences on our classroom, and learning environments such as light, noise and temperature, students collect data and identify the optimal learning environment.

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Beeswax wrap project

This project creates opportunities for students to design, create, market and sell a plastic wrap alternative, and to work with a local business or community group that supplies some materials. This lesson was devised by Trudy Ward, Clarendon Vale Primary School, Tasmania.

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Food innovation and molecular gastronomy lesson

In this lesson, students explore connections between science, design, and technologies through the lens of food innovation and food science. Students look at interesting and unusual food products, using food textures as a jumping off point to explore the relationship between chemistry and food. Students then experiment ...

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Sphero young inventors

In this lesson students will explore the use of Sphero in the everyday world by adding accessories to invent solutions to workplace or other problems or simply by inventing an adaptation to the device. In each case, they are to build the accessory and create the code required for the device to serve a particular purpose. ...

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Cardboard Automata

This activity invites students to explore simple mechanical elements such as cams, levers, and linkages, while creating a moving sculpture. This activity is simple to start but may become more and more complex as students become familiar with possible motions and imagine ways to artistically decorate their contraption. ...

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Balancing Sculptures

This activity invites students to explore balance and stability by designing and building whimsical kinetic sculptures that tilt, slide, and suspend everyday objects and ordinary materials into surprising arrangements. Students explore stability, centres of gravity, balanced forces and symmetry through this hands-on, tactile ...

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Cranky Contraptions

This activity invites students to make Cranky Contraptions, kinetic sculptures that animate a character or scene when a handle is turned. These automata are powered by a simple crank slider mechanism which provides the basic motion. Everyday materials around can be repurposed into these contraptions. The activity includes ...

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Engineers are problem solvers

In this lesson, students find examples of engineering all around them and identify the importance of engineering in our daily lives. They explore the engineering design cycle through a simple hands-on challenge.

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Hologram poetry lesson

In this lesson, students are asked to present a poem as a visual illusion. They explore holograms and visual illusions, and then delve into the mechanics of poetry construction by exploring the poetry of Banjo Paterson. They write their own poem or recite a poem and create a hologram illusion of themselves reciting a poem. ...

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Walking on Crushed Glass

This is an illustrated story of a real-life engineering solution designed to recycle glass waste and reuse it as reinforcement for concrete used in footpaths. The book explains the process of innovation to reach a viable solution. It shows the creativity, innovation and collaboration required to provide a solution that ...

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I am an inventor lesson

In this lesson, students explore the life, work and times of Rube Goldberg. The lesson uses Rube Goldberg’s work to teach students about simple machines, how they function and their design principles. Working in groups, the students then design and create a Rube Goldberg machine that can complete a simple task. Students ...

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Cross age making a robot

This lesson sequence is a cross-age project that can be used for students in year 5/6 in collaboration with students from years 1-2. In this project, students collaborate on a code for an unplugged robot. They design, test and modify the robot and create instruction manuals.

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Sphero Invent a Game

This lesson will explore how to program the Sphero using functions and show the benefits of decomposing the behaviour of the Sphero into functions, instead of writing line by line repeated behaviours. This lesson idea was created by Celia Coffa.

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Lilypad Personalised Alert Buzzer

In this lesson students will create a personalised musical buzzer by programming the LilyPad Arduino to play a sound using the Main board, Buzzer and Button, coding the note frequency in Arduino IDE. The lesson can be extended to include LED’s that light up or flash according to the note played to enable the buzzer to be ...

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Sphero: Catch me if you can

By years 5 and 6 many students may have had some experience with a visual programming language such as Scratch or Blockly that is the basis of the Hour of Code. Sphero will take the screen based control of an image to the next level by introducing a robotic device controlled by a visual programming language. This lesson ...

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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.

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Coding for GUIs Lesson 2: Controls for input

This is the second in a series of lessons to incorporate graphical user interfaces (GUIs) into your general-purpose programming. The series follows on from the Visual To Text Coding lesson series.

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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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Light up soft toy with LilyPad

This project will explore two ways of controlling the flow of current to a LED using a button and switch. No programming is initially expected in this project, however once students are comfortable with connecting or sewing their circuits and attaching lights, a follow-up project that involves using a pre built Arduino ...

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Design a quiz - Convicts: crime and punishment

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