Technologies Education

While Design Technologies has existed in schools for some time, it has evolved from a tradition of arts and craft to have a formal design focus, and more recently, on developing Design Thinking. It leads into subjects such as agriculture, industrial design and home economics, containing many of the developmental knowledge and skills for these subjects.

Digital Technologies is a new subject, and quite different to how computing has been taught in most schools where the focus has been on ICT and ICT integration into all learning areas. ICT refer to tools – software, hardware and communication tools. This ICT aspect of computer education is now contained in the ICT General Capabilities that are taught in all subjects. Digital Technologies is more closely aligned with computer science and software development (programming), and not how to use ICT tools.

The key difference between the Digital Technologies curriculum and the ICT general capability is that the capability helps students to become effective users of digital technologies (ICT) while the Digital Technologies curriculum helps students to become confident developers of digital solutions.

The introduction of a new subject into the compulsory (that all students learn) school curriculum is reasonably rare, last occurring in the 60’s with Geography. So why do we have this new Technologies curriculum and a new subject of Digital Technologies? Essentially, student interest in Computer Education has been in decline since the turn of the century, with numbers decreasing in senior subjects and similar impact in tertiary studies, and this has occurred despite widespread adoption of digital technologies by all industries and acknowledgement that most newly created jobs will require an in-depth understanding of computing.

This has largely been a systemic failure resulting from our focus on ICT education and integration, where the learning of applications such as the office suite, multimedia, the internet, etc. became trivialised, with students seeing little value in studying subjects to learn things they were readily teaching themselves.

In response, the Digital Technologies subject has been developed, differentiating Computing from Design and Technology, but acknowledging the similarity in processes by encompassing both subjects in a learning area of Technologies.

Digital Technologies is the study of how modern technologies work and the creation of solutions to problems through the development of digital technologies. It is different to previous ICT studies that taught students how to use technology, now the expectation is that students will create their own digital technologies. Learning how to use digital technologies is now distributed across all Learning Areas through the ICT General Capabilities, including Digital Technologies (so you can still teach students how to use a particular tool – when it is useful to their studies of the subject, such as a programming language), but the focus of the subject is not on learning how to use technology – including technologies such as robotics and programming languages, but how we can create with technology – particularly the creation of solutions to problems.

This is a huge change in thinking and one that will take teachers a while to come to terms with, but whichever approach is taken by teachers, the Technologies Learning Area is primarily concerned with students creating solutions to problems, not learning how to use ICT tools.

Rationale

Technologies enrich and impact on the lives of people and societies globally. Australia needs enterprising individuals who can make discerning decisions about the development and use of technologies and who can independently and collaboratively develop solutions to complex challenges and contribute to sustainable patterns of living. Technologies can play an important role in transforming, restoring and sustaining societies and natural, managed and constructed environments.

The Australian Curriculum: Technologies ensures that all students benefit from learning about and working with traditional, contemporary and emerging technologies that shape the world in which we live. By applying their knowledge and practical skills and processes when using technologies and other resources to create innovative solutions, independently and collaboratively, they develop knowledge, understanding and skills to respond creatively to current and future needs.

The practical nature of the Technologies learning area engages students in critical and creative thinking, including understanding interrelationships in systems when solving complex problems. A systematic approach to experimentation, problem-solving, prototyping and evaluation instils in students the value of planning and reviewing processes to realise ideas.

All young Australians should develop capacity for action and a critical appreciation of the processes through which technologies are developed and how technologies can contribute to societies. Students need opportunities to consider the use and impact of technological solutions on equity, ethics, and personal and social values. In creating solutions, as well as responding to the designed world, students consider desirable sustainable patterns of living, and contribute to preferred futures for themselves and others.

Aims

The Australian Curriculum: Technologies aims to develop the knowledge, understanding and skills to ensure that, individually and collaboratively, students:

• investigate, design, plan, manage, create and evaluate solutions;

• are creative, innovative and enterprising when using traditional, contemporary and emerging technologies, and understand how technologies have developed over time;

• make informed and ethical decisions about the role, impact and use of technologies in the economy, environment and society for a sustainable future;

• engage confidently with and responsibly select and manipulate appropriate technologies − materials, data, systems, components, tools and equipment − when designing and creating solutions; and

• critique, analyse and evaluate problems, needs or opportunities to identify and create solutions.

Critical and Creative Thinking

In the Australian Curriculum, students develop capability in critical and creative thinking as they learn to generate and evaluate knowledge, clarify concepts and ideas, seek possibilities, consider alternatives and solve problems. Critical and creative thinking involves students thinking broadly and deeply using skills, behaviours and dispositions such as reason, logic, resourcefulness, imagination and innovation in all learning areas at school and in their lives beyond school.

Thinking that is productive, purposeful and intentional is at the centre of effective learning. By applying a sequence of thinking skills, students develop an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the processes they can use whenever they encounter problems, unfamiliar information and new ideas. In addition, the progressive development of knowledge about thinking and the practice of using thinking strategies can increase students’ motivation for, and management of, their own learning. They become more confident and autonomous problem-solvers and thinkers.

Responding to the challenges of the twenty-first century – with its complex environmental, social and economic pressures – requires young people to be creative, innovative, enterprising and adaptable, with the motivation, confidence and skills to use critical and creative thinking purposefully.

This capability combines two types of thinking: critical thinking and creative thinking. Though the two are not interchangeable, they are strongly linked, bringing complementary dimensions to thinking and learning.

Critical thinking is at the core of most intellectual activity that involves students learning to recognise or develop an argument, use evidence in support of that argument, draw reasoned conclusions, and use information to solve problems. Examples of critical thinking skills are interpreting, analysing, evaluating, explaining, sequencing, reasoning, comparing, questioning, inferring, hypothesising, appraising, testing and generalising.

Creative thinking involves students learning to generate and apply new ideas in specific contexts, seeing existing situations in a new way, identifying alternative explanations, and seeing or making new links that generate a positive outcome. This includes combining parts to form something original, sifting and refining ideas to discover possibilities, constructing theories and objects, and acting on intuition. The products of creative endeavour can involve complex representations and images, investigations and performances, digital and computer-generated output, or occur as virtual reality.

Concept formation is the mental activity that helps us compare, contrast and classify ideas, objects, and events. Concept learning can be concrete or abstract and is closely allied with metacognition. What has been learnt can be applied to future examples. It underpins the organising elements.

Dispositions such as inquisitiveness, reasonableness, intellectual flexibility, open- and fair-mindedness, a readiness to try new ways of doing things and consider alternatives, and persistence promote and are enhanced by critical and creative thinking.

Design and Technologies

Knowledge and understanding

Technologies and society

• the use, development and impact of technologies in people’s lives

Technologies contexts

• technologies and design across a range of technologies contexts

Processes and production skills

Creating designed solutions by:

• investigating and defining

• generating and designing

• producing and implementing

• evaluating

• collaborating and managing

Digital Technologies

Knowledge and understanding

Digital systems

• the components of digital systems: hardware, software and networks and their use

Representation of data

• how data are represented and structured symbolically

Collecting, managing and analysing data

Creating digital solutions by:

• investigating and defining

• generating and designing

• producing and implementing

• evaluating

• collaborating and managing