Teacher Guidance
To support students to undertake planning for practice at Level 8, teachers could:

• ensure that there is a brief against which planning to develop an outcome can occur
• support students to critically analyse a range of project management practices and explore how project scheduling is used to manage Technological Practice
• support students to establish and implement a coherent project schedule that allows for the coordination and management of the: regular review of goals, planning tools, all resources required (time, money, stakeholder/s, materials, components, software, equipment, tools and/or hardware etc) and review points
• support students to provide evidence of effective and efficient planning decisions. Effective and efficient planning decisions ensures that the use of resources is optimised during the development and production of an outcome produced to successfully meet the brief.

Establish a coherent project schedule suitable for the physical and social environment where the outcome is to be developed and implemented, informed by critical analysis of existing project management

Project schedules suitable for determining a suitable context and issue, and establishing the practice to be undertaken to develop a resulting Technological Outcome.

Explore the potential project schedule using:

• mind mapping tools
• graphic organisers
• compare and contrast.

Focus on answering questions such as:

• Is the project schedule likely to enable a Technological Outcome to be developed that is fit for purpose for the physical and social environment in which it will be placed?
• What constraints (political, social, moral, ethical, economic) will likely impact on the Technological Practice undertaken to develop a Technological Outcome, and the outcomes themselves?
• Is the project schedule informed by critical analysis of existing project management?

Explore unsuccessful products and the project management practices (or lack of!!!) used to develop them

Focus on identifying the planning practice(s) that were missing
What project management practices were incomplete:

• Risk management
• Planning tools chosen
• Review points – When? How?
• When could they have identified that the outcome was becoming unfit for purpose?
• What constraints were identified/ not identified?
• How could constraints have been considered?

www.baddesigns.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rOtS7wsZCo&feature=related

Implement project schedule, undertaking reflection at critical review points to revise or confirm schedule to ensure the effective and efficient completion of an outcome

What is meant by efficient and effective?

Define efficient and effective.
What does efficiency and effectiveness look like in technology?
How does the need for these two things (efficient and effective) affect project management?
Evaluate efficiency and effectiveness in a practicing technologists practice - compare and contrast the fitness for purpose of the Technological Outcome(s) they produced with the resources (including time, waste, use of stakeholder feedback etc) they use.

Efficiency Competition to model what efficiency is.

Students in groups, each group has same resources, time and instructions etc to create a one-off product. Students plan before the task what they could do to ensure efficiency (for example, use minimum resources/use mock-ups and patterns to ensure efficient use of materials).
Evaluate the success of planning practice against the quality of the one-off product they create (its fitness for purpose).

Effective Competition

Students in groups, each group has same resources, time and instructions etc to create a one-off product. Students plan before the task what they could do to ensure effectiveness
Evaluate the success of planning practice against the quality of the one-off product they create (its fitness for purpose).

Students aware of the integrative nature of planning for practice and project management.

Students encouraged to critically evaluate their planning practices to determine their effectiveness in informing next steps. This evaluation should focus on answering questions such as:

• Is the planning and management tools supporting informed projections as to where to next?
• What information is missing to allow informed projections?
• Is there a better means of/tool for planning and managing that would allow a more efficient use of resources and better projections to occur?

Manage the project to provide evidence of the coordination of goals, planning tools, resources and progress review points and justify planning decisions.

Strategies for future projection – use of creative thinking strategies.

Examples include:

• 'What if...' questions
• De Bono
• inquiry learning strategies
• organisations of think tanks
• Secondary Futures resource.

Critically evaluate others (practicing technologist) project management practices through analysis of case studies and/or their actual practice undertaken as observed/presented.

Critically evaluate the practice of others focusing on such things as:

• the management tools used
• the opportunities created and/or constraints that resulted due to specific practices having been undertaken
• management of resources and how/if this was undertaken in an ongoing manner through-out the Technological Practice which was undertaken
• justifications provided for the planning and management practices adopted in terms of the physical and social environment in which the practice took place
• how they ensured that their Technological Practice was always focussed on addressing the context and issue.