Supporting Learning Environment Level 5

To support students to undertake brief development at level five teachers could:

• provide an appropriate context and issue that allows students to access resources (including key stakeholders)
• support students to identify a need or opportunity and develop a conceptual statement
• support students understand the physical and functional nature required of their outcome
• guide students to develop key attributes into specifications.

• Identify a need or opportunity from the given context and issue
  
  

Brain storming off a given context.

Class brainstorm on board/datashow/ smartboard to identify potential needs or opportunities including identification of who their stakeholders would/may be.
Develop a series of questions that can be used to interview a person that can help to identify a need or opportunity.

Using a video of a natural or manmade (sic) disaster.

Students identify needs and/or opportunities for a technological advancement/solution that could have prevented the disaster from occurring.

Personal contexts/issues

Use personal contexts/issues to generate needs or opportunities
e. g.
Messy bedroom = a need/opportunity
Tramping = a need/ opportunity

Establish a conceptual statement that justifies the nature of the outcome and why such an outcome should be developed

Writing conceptual statements for given needs or opportunities

Students practice writing conceptual statements for an issue/opportunity that is provided by the teacher or identified from the above activities.

Students presenting their conceptual statement to their class.

Students focus on justifying the nature of an outcome and explaining why such an outcome should be developed

Establish the specifications for an outcome based on the nature of the outcome required to address the need or opportunity, and informed by key stakeholder considerations

Distinguishing the difference between attributes and specifications.

Provide students with a range of briefs that contain both attributes and specifications.
In groups students identify those that are attributes and those which are specifications.
(Use Techlink case studies, especially the student workbooks to obtain brief examples)

Bulls-eye chart

Three concentric circles – outside circle labeled attributes, middle circle ‘key’ attributes, inner circle specifications. Students to refine identified attributes into specifications (i.e. measurable/observable functional and aesthetic expectations)

What? How? Why?

Students move from writing attributes to specifications, and then consider stakeholders in terms of:

• what
• how
• why

Identify stakeholder considerations

Create a client profile, and write specifications that meet their need(s).

Technology student website - client profile

Visiting technologists who explain the practice they undertake to develop their brief (conceptual statements and specifications).

Students seek justifications from the technologists as to why they wrote the specifications they did into their brief (i.e. why were they selected?)

Deconstructing an existing product to identify specifications

Students write brief specifications for an existing product through deconstructing the product to identify such things as materials made from, cost, size of components/ingredients, relationships between components/ingredients, safety considerations etc.

Students presenting their developed brief to their class.

Students focus on justifying why their selected specifications are important to address the need/opportunity.

Communicate specifications that allow an outcome to be evaluated as fit for purpose.

Identify how specifications may vary due to different uses within similar products.

Provide a range of products that perform similar functions and discuss how different specifications were prioritised due to their intended use/stakeholder needs e.g. Hair cutting scissors – made from surgical quality stainless steel.
Craft scissors - made from carbon steel.
Think, pair , share discussion that leads to a written example.

Critiquing specifications to determine their measurability or establish if they are observable.

Sorting a range of statements into those which are specifications and those which are not measurable / observable.
Identify what it is that enables a specification to be measurable?
Identify what it is that allows a specification to be observable?
Note: an attribute is usually subjectively measured/determined, while a specification is more objectively measured/determined (i.e. more specific)