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Behaving with real class – Using a visual language

This lesson sequence offers an approaches to teaching object-oriented principles using visual programming. It attempts to address the problem that many of programming languages are too complex and their environments confusing for many students.

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Getting to know Bee-Bot

Students are introduced to the Bee-Bot as a robotic device. They learn about what the Bee-Bot is, the functions and how the Bee-Bot can be used for specific purposes. They learn how to develop a sequence of steps for the Bee-Bot to follow. This lesson idea was created by Rebecca Vivian.

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Describing an everyday object

In this lesson, students act like the inventor of an everyday object that does not yet exist. Students abstract the essential details, and describe what need would be fulfilled by the new object and how, specifically, it functions. They will then translate the description into a format appropriate for modeling the object ...

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Ciphering a sentence

A cipher is a message that has been written in such a way (encoded) that it is unreadable by others. In this lesson, students will use mapping to encode a sentence. Students will work with a partner to create an algorithm that describes the encryption process. They will also examine encoded and decoded messages to recognize ...

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Physics of video games lesson

In this lesson students build a simple Pong game in Scratch and consider the physics involved in the game play. They then apply their understanding of force and motion to design their own video game concept. The resource includes links to downloadable lesson plan, websites, videos, apps and an assessment rubric. The lesson ...

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Food innovation and molecular gastronomy lesson

In this lesson, students explore connections between science, design, and technologies through the lens of food innovation and food science. Students look at interesting and unusual food products, using food textures as a jumping off point to explore the relationship between chemistry and food. Students then experiment ...

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Design a flag with Pencil Code

Design your own Australian flag by firstly examining common elements of flags, creating a step by step process (algorithm) to program your design after exploring a ‘block-based’ turtle drawing program such as Pencil Code.

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Saltwater crocs: resourceful or a resource?

This lesson focuses on the analysis of a dataset that records scientific data collected about the crocodile population in the Kimberley region during 2015. The lesson follows an inquiry process where students use the dataset to answer relevant questions about the crocodile population. It also provides an opportunity for ...

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Storm survivor: Input, decision-making and loops

Students use a visual programming language to create a game or quiz to help members of a community prepare for a severe weather event.

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Home automation: General purpose programming

Investigate home automation systems, including those powered by artificial intelligence (AI) with speech recognition capability. These suggested activities for year levels 7-8 are designed for students using general purpose programming languages JavaScript and Python, with similar content to the visual coding lesson Home ...

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The shock of the new

Using four inventions from 1985, this lesson sequence explores the impact of innovation, supporting circumstances, how individuals contribute to change and the importance of addressing benefits as well as risks in the development of new systems.

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Sphero Invent a Game

This lesson will explore how to program the Sphero using functions and show the benefits of decomposing the behaviour of the Sphero into functions, instead of writing line by line repeated behaviours. This lesson idea was created by Celia Coffa.

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Design Thinking Process - Empathising

In this lesson students understand design thinking as a process for solving problems creatively. Students explore the design thinking process of empathising and seek to understand more about the users and the problem they are trying to solve. This particular lesson explores reducing litter through the design brief although ...

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Filter bubbles, bias, rabbit holes and nudging

This lesson focuses on the AI systems that recommend content in various applications that students use on a day-to-day basis. It draws on students’ ethical understandings during analysis of these systems. This lesson was developed by the Digital Technologies Institute in collaboration with the Digital Technologies Hub.

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Bee-Bot ruler

Explore the concept of sequencing steps, using Bee-Bots to measure length.

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Beautiful biomes

In this lesson students learn the features of the five main biomes, and use ClassVR headsets and CoSpaces to design and create a virtual biome to explore. They research and identify the features of a biome and then create their own virtual environment. The resource explores the human impacts on biodiversity and explore ...

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I am an inventor lesson

In this lesson, students explore the life, work and times of Rube Goldberg. The lesson uses Rube Goldberg’s work to teach students about simple machines, how they function and their design principles. Working in groups, the students then design and create a Rube Goldberg machine that can complete a simple task. Students ...

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Visual to text coding: Lesson 4

This is the fourth in a series of lessons to transition from visual coding to text-based coding with a General Purpose Programming language. This lesson may take two to three 45-minute periods. It introduces the combining of logical operators and and or for more complex decisions.

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Visual to text coding: Lesson 1

This is the first in a series of lessons to transition from visual coding to text-based coding with a general-purpose programming language. This lesson may take two to three 45-minute periods. It introduces how to create variables, get user input and perform maths operations.

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Visual to text coding: The Basics

This series of lessons is to help students to transition from visual coding to text-based coding with a general-purpose programming language. This section provides the basics in order to use the programming environments: Scratch, Python and JavaScript.