Supporting Learning Environment Level 8

To support students to develop understanding of characteristics of technology at level 8, teachers could:

• support students to critically analyse examples of technological developments and their consequences, known and unknown and intended and unintended, to gain insight into the social responsibility technologists have due to the interventionist nature of technology. Examples should allow students to gain insight into how technology has real and long term impacts for the made, natural and social world. Students should be supported to discuss the implications this has for technologists’ collective responsibility
• support students to understand that technology can challenge people’s views of what it is to be ‘human’. Contexts for exploration could include contemporary developments in the area of communication technologies, artificial intelligence, human-robotic interfaces, second-life gaming, genetic engineering, nanotechnology etc.
• support students to explore and critique the role of technology in the creation of sustainable environments. This would include discussion of such things as the ethics of designing for limited technological outcome lifespan, designing to comply with minimal engineering ideals, utilizing and developing sustainable materials, reducing energy consumption and waste, developing and managing socio-technological environments, etc.

Discuss technology as intervention by design and explain the impacts and implications of this

Critically analyse case studies of technological developments
e.g.

• Data storage
• Genetic modification
• Medicine-Antibiotics
• Aviation
• Smart materials

Teacher supports students to explore the technological developments and their impacts (known and unknown, intended and unintended, long term and short term). Students present and discuss findings to class

Class debate the role and responsibility of a technologist

Pose Victor Papanek’s view as the subject of debate;
‘whether designers, architects, and engineers can be held personally responsible and legally liable for creating tools, objects, appliances, and buildings that bring about environmental deterioration’
Assign students as pro or anti this view and have a formal class debate.

Discuss why technology can challenge people’s views of what it is to be ‘human’

Watch movies and/or You Tube clips that challenge ideas of what it is to be human.

To introduce the concept of ‘challenging what it is to be human’ by watching clips such as
e.g.

• www.quazen.com/Arts/
  Architecture/10-Mistakes-in-
  Modern-Table-Design.202419
• Honda Robot see: www.youtube.com/
  watch?v=cfaAiujrX_Y
  and
  www.youtube.com/
  watch?v=VTlV0Y5yAww

• Swimsuit design
• See: http://blog.djsports.com/2009/08/01/swimsuit-ban-will-be-enforced-on-janurary-1-2010/

and

• www.jsme.or.jp/English/news08(535KB).pdf

Have students work in groups and produce a short skit/movie clip that challenges people’s view of what it is to be human

Students present their short skit/movie clip to the rest of the class

Critique the role of technology in the development of sustainable environments

Analyse technological outcomes developed to ensure sustainable environment

Determine attributes about these technologies that allows them to be considered as maintaining/ensuring a sustainable environment
Use a Venn diagram to illustrate common and different attributes

Discuss future scenarios where technology plays out different roles and justify projected impacts.

Have students work in pairs/groups – choose a context (e.g. artificial intelligence, second-life gaming, genetic engineering), and research how a technology has played out different roles for different people and justify their projected impacts.

Using research findings make a presentation to explain to the class how a technology has played out different roles for different people and justify their projected impacts.