We were thrilled to hear that all 7 groups of students who have been working towards participation in the annual Young ICT Explorer Competition have progressed through to the Judging and Awards Event. This is testament to their hard work but also to our belief, as as school, in the power of digital technologies to provide solutions.
Because providing digital solutions is at the heart of the Digital Technologies Curriculum, it is interesting to look deeper at this and investigate how much alignment there is between the projects prompted by participation in the Young ICT Explorer Competition and the curriculum. Without even looking at the content descriptors and achievement standards – let’s see how much of the general intent of this curriculum is apparent from the work that has been done.
- The overarching idea is Creating Preferred Futures. Students are considering how solutions are created now will be used in the future. As they work to develop solutions they are considering liveability, economic prosperity and environmental sustainability. (ACARA, 2015)
- Project based learning is listed as the preferred way of working for students within this curriculum area and that key skills are developed during early years so that in Yrs 4-6 students are managing projects through to successful completion.
- As part of project based learning – student choice is often a priority, with the students being able to choose the solution they see as being the best one. In this way we are leveraging student motivation and interest and allowing them ownership of the process and outcome.
All of the projects are examples of the overall intent of this curriculum.
As a school, we are looking at mapping the Digital Technologies Curriculum to other curriculum areas – they can be called partner subjects. Within this group of projects, clear links are clear with most of them:
Data Bot – Science and Circuitry
Rubbish Bot – Science and Circuitry
Sustainability – Science and Geography
Digitalising the First Fleet – History
Well done to all these students in Yrs 3-6 and we look forward to seeing their digital solutions close up!
