Digital technologies / Year 7 and 8 / Digital Technologies Processes and Production Skills

Curriculum content descriptions

Design the user experience of a digital system, generating, evaluating and communicating alternative designs (ACTDIP028)

Elaborations
  • designing the user interface of a solution using a range of design tools, for example using a storyboard to explain the stages of a game, and wire-frames and mock-ups to describe the appearance of a solution
  • identifying features that make an effective game, such as storyline, goal, reward, gameplay and environment
  • identifying similar digital systems and their user interfaces, assessing whether user interface elements can be re-used
  • presenting and comparing alternative designs to a solution for a problem, for example presenting alternative design mock-ups to the class
  • applying the principles and elements of design to a series of solutions to evaluate the success of each solution to hold the viewer’s attention, for example identifying which colour combinations or framing of visual elements keep different audiences engaged with on-screen activity
General capabilities
  • Literacy Literacy
  • Critical and creative thinking Critical and creative thinking
  • ICT capability Information and Communication Technology (ICT) capability
ScOT terms

Information and communication technologies,  User interfaces,  Usability

Online

Travel safe

In this series of lessons, students use a basic programming language to design and create an app for younger students to encourage them to use public transport safely. They explore basic user-interface principles and take into account aesthetics and the development of a positive user experience. Their goal is to create ...

Online

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 ...

Online

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 poster

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

Video

Expert webinar video: Russell Scott - Vortals: Augmented reality, virtual reality, 2D, 3D and game design lessons

Russell Scott, Co-Founder of multimedia design company Vortals, demonstrates some of the ways he teaches students about augmented reality, virtual reality, 2D, 3D and game design.

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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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Create dichotomous keys lesson

In this lesson students engage in a hands-on exploration of local diversity. Students research and record local wildlife, learn about biodiversity in Australia, and conduct a ‘bush blitz’. They learn how to create dichotomous keys and translate their keys into a wildlife discovery app prototype. The resource includes links ...

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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 ...

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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.

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Computational thinking cut out cards

This set of printable cards provides definitions of six aspects of computational thinking.

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Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies: years 7-8

This PDF provides a line of sight from content descriptions to achievement standards in the Digital Technologies subject in the Australian Curriculum.

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Physics of video games lesson

In this lesson students build a simple Pong game in Scratch and consider the physics involved in the game play. They then apply their understanding of force and motion to design their own video game concept. The resource includes links to downloadable lesson plan, websites, videos, apps and an assessment rubric. The lesson ...

Online

Coding for GUIs Lesson 1: Structure, style and function

This is the first in a series of lessons to incorporate Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) into your General Purpose Programming. It follows on from the Visual To Text Coding lesson series.

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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.

Online

Coding for GUIs Lesson 3: Timers and triggers

This is the third 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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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 ...

Online

Habits of a Systems Thinker

This lesson introduces some of the skills and concepts involved with Systems Thinking. Students are introduced to a number of Habits of a System Thinker, positive and negative feedback loops and the concept of supra- and subsystems.

Online

Coding for GUIs Final project: A complete application with GUI

This is the final project 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.

Online

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.

Downloadable

DT Challenge - 7/8 Javascript - Cookie Clicker

Learn how to make interactive webpages and build a surprisingly addictive game! In this DT Challenge, you'll learn the web technologies that form the foundations of the internet. In this course you'll learn the basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript! You'll build webpages using text and images, and learn how to make them interactive ...