Supporting Learning Environment Level 5

To support students to develop understanding of characteristics of technology at level 5, teachers could:

• provide students with opportunities to examine and debate examples of innovative technological developments. Examples should draw from the past and present and allow students to explore how creative and critical thinking impacts on developments and how what could happen and what should happen were considered
• guide students to analyse a range of examples of technologies to examine how people’s perceptions and/or level of acceptance has influenced the practices and decisions underpinning their development and implementation. Examples should be drawn from the past and present to allow students to gain insight into the influence past experiences have on the perception and acceptance of existing and future technological practice and outcomes
• guide students to analyse a range of examples of technological practices to identify codified technological knowledge that was used to inform design and manufacturing decisions. Technological knowledge becomes codified when technological experts consider it is useful for a number of situations. Codified technological knowledge refers to such things as codes of standards, material tolerances, and codes of practice including codes of ethics, intellectual property codes, etc. Examples should be drawn from within their own and others’ technological practice
• provide students with opportunities to discuss the role of codified knowledge in technology and understand why and how particular knowledge becomes codified. Codified knowledge provides others with access to established knowledge and procedures that have been shown to support successful technological developments in the past and can serve to remind technologists of their responsibilities. In this way codified knowledge can be used to provide constructional, ethical and/or legal compliance constraints on contemporary technological practice
• provide students with opportunities to discuss how established codified knowledge can be challenged and that ongoing revision is important due to the changing made, social and natural world. For example, the development of new materials, tools, and/or techniques, shifting social, political and environmental needs and understandings, and technological outcome malfunction, can all serve to challenge existing codified knowledge.

Discuss examples of creative and critical thinking that have supported technological innovation

Students brainstorm and record all of the technological products they own or use daily.

The intention is to get students to realize they readily accept new technology because of their past experience with technology.

Students investigate their parent’s/grandparent’s acceptance of new technology. (e.g. video conferencing, Thunderbirds/Star Trek, Skype, microwave)

The intention is that students will realise that other generations have had different experiences with technology than themselves and this influences their acceptance of new technology.

Watch an advert advertising a new technology (e.g 3D home televisions) and discuss if we should adopt this new technology.

Review future technologies and have students:

• debate if people will accept these technology(s) should they be developed and implemented
• discuss what would need to change for the technology(s) to be accepted

Use Science Fiction movie extracts or trailers from a Science Fiction movie or trailer.

See www.fancast.com/trailers

or

www.apple.com/trailers/
genres/science_fiction/

Explore websites such as ‘Future Technologies’ to find an idea for a technology that is yet to be realised

Explain how people’s past experiences of technology (both in terms of the nature of practices undertaken and the initial development and ongoing manufacturing of outcomes) influences their perception of technology

Forecasting future developments for everyday (familiar) products

In groups students choose an everyday technological product (e.g. phone, schoolbag… ) and brainstorm what further development could be done to this product – inform these ideas based on your own past experiences and predictions about future needs/technological developments.
The aim is for students to understand how they can influence future development based on past experiences

Provide students with a brief to further develop an everyday technological product

Have students explore design ideas to enhance the functionality/appearance of technological product
Class to provide initial stakeholder feedback on student design ideas. Students then present design ideas to wider stakeholders (parents, grandparents) and compare their feedback to that obtained from the class. Use a Venn diagram to illustrate found differences between the feedback
Students discuss (these differences to determine potential reasons for them

Explain how people’s perception of technology influences their acceptance of technology

Students research different people’s perception of a technology and determine how this influences their acceptance of it

Use a Venn diagram to illustrate found differences between people’s perceptions
Students discuss (these differences to determine potential reasons for them

Explain how people’s perception of technology impacts on future technological development

Review Youtube video of product failure or technological disasters (for example; Iran air, Technological disasters)
Students discuss lessons learnt from such disasters and how this informed the development of codified knowledge (e.g. changes in building codes

Students realise that from failure lessons can be learnt that can lead to guidelines and codes to prevent failure in the future.

Explain how and why technological knowledge becomes codified

Students do simple task, e.g. Package an egg, dropping an egg from a height.
Successful students pass on knowledge of how it worked to others via text

Students realize that codified knowledge is not only developed from failures.
(e.g. knitting patterns, recipes, sewing pattern, skateboard, music genres)

Explain the role codified knowledge plays in technological practice.

Indentify examples of where and when codified knowledge is used.

Brainstorm different occupations and sub cultures (e.g. surfers, computer geeks, electrician, gamers, etc.). Discuss the codified knowledge that each of these groups uses

Activity: understanding the purpose for codified knowledge (including graphic codes)

Students brainstorm questions about the value of codified knowledge and then discuss potential answer to them. For example:

• what is the purpose of the codified knowledge?
• where it is this codified knowledge used?
• who could you expect to understand this codified knowledge?

Codified knowledge in action

Put an unfamiliar ‘code’ in front of students to see if they can read it./determine what it means
Discuss the importance of /reason for having standardised codified knowledge

Have a technologist visit and talk about their responsibilities, and the Codes of Practice and Codes of Ethics they work within

Set up a scenario that you are going to be developing a technological outcome for a the local daycare centre (e.g. making a movie, making, toys, furniture etc). Brainstorm some of the factors you would have to consider in this situation
Using understandings gained from the visiting technologist discuss the technologists responsibilities:

• to the community (daycare centre)
• to their professional organisation/peers

Provide students with a practical example of how a technologist works with codified knowledge when developing a technological outcome

Discuss where codified knowledge was used in the development of the outcomes and how this enhanced/hindered the technologists practice in terms of their ability to:

• communicate with their peers
• record ideas