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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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 ...

Online

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.

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.

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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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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.

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.

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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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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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DTiF Classroom Exploring AI in the Classroom: Teacher debrief

Digital Technologies in Focus curriculum officers discuss a lesson about Artificial Intelligence and curriculum links for teachers

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DTiF in conversation with Kevin Bradley and Cassandra Arkinstall from Save the Bilby Fund – Using Digital Technologies to help save bilbies

Kevin Bradley, CEO of Save the Bilby Fund, and Cassandra Arkinstall, a researcher and volunteer at Save the Bilby Fund explain how important digital technologies are in the campaign to save the bilby from extinction. The video explains how digital systems are used to collect and visualise data and help eradicate threats ...

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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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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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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 ...

Audio

Faith Lutheran College – Podcast

This podcast includes information about the aims, challenges, insights and accomplishments of Faith Lutheran College's participation in the Digital Technologies in Focus project.

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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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Coding a sentimental chatbot in Python

Incorporating 11 tutorial videos and two informative lecture videos, this learning sequence explores natural language processing, a significant application of artificial intelligence. Teachers and students are led through the coding in Python of a chatbot, a conversational program capable of responding in varied ways to ...

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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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Data bias in AI

Artificial intelligence can sometimes be biased to certain shapes or colours. When such AI systems are applied to situations that involve people, then this bias can manifest itself as bias against skin colour or gender. This lesson explores bias in AI, where it comes from and what can be done to prevent it.

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Recognising AI

Use the tasks in this lesson to introduce concepts that underpin artificial intelligence (AI). The majority of the tasks are unplugged (do not require a digital device). Use the downloadable AI cards with your students to explore what they know about AI.

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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.