Teachers should establish if students have developed robust level three understandings and are ready to begin working towards level three achievement objectives for the nature of technology and plan learning experiences to progress these as guided by the level three Indicators below.

Characteristics of Technology

Characteristics of Technological Outcomes

Achievement Objective

Students will:

• Understand how technological development expands human possibilities and how technology draws on knowledge from a wide range of disciplines.

Achievement Objective

Students will:

• Understand that technological outcomes can be interpreted in terms of how they might be used and by whom and that each has a proper function as well as possible alternative functions.

Teacher Guidance

To support students to develop understanding of characteristics of technology at level 4, teachers could:

• provide students with opportunities to examine a range of technologies that have and/or could expand human possibilities by changing people's sensory perception and/or physical abilities. Examination of technologies should allow students to gain insight into how decisions are based on both what could and what should happen;
• guide students to understand that 'expanding human possibilities' can result in positive and negative impacts on societies and natural environments and may be experienced differently by particular groups of people;
• provide students with opportunities to examine and debate examples of innovative technologies that resulted in new possibilities. Examples should draw from the past and present and allow students to identify the creative and critical thinking that underpinned the developments;
• provide students opportunity to explore the wide range of knowledge and skills from diverse disciplines that support technology;
• provide students opportunity to explore differences between technological knowledge and knowledge from other disciplines;
• guide students to analyse a range of examples of technological practices and to identify the knowledge and skills that informed initial design decisions and ongoing manufacturing decisions. Examples should be drawn from within their own and others' technological practice and allow students to gain insight into how technological knowledge and skills, and knowledge and skills from other disciplines, can support technology.

Teacher Guidance

To support students to develop understanding of characteristics of technological outcomes at level 4, teachers could:

• provide students with the opportunity to explore examples of technological outcomes and guide them to identify their proper function. Proper function can be determined from an analysis of both the design intent that drove the outcome's development as well as how it is most commonly used;
• provide students with examples of technological outcomes where the proper function of a technological outcome has changed over time because an alternative use was successful and then became socially accepted as the norm;
• provide students with examples of technological outcomes that have been used unsuccessfully for other purposes and/or in different environments and support them to identify the negative impacts. Impacts may be in terms of expected action not resulting, damage to the outcome, injury to the user, the damage to the social or physical environment – or any combination of these;
• provide students with a description of an identified purpose (e.g. a stated need or opportunity) and other relevant details. These details should include such things as intended users and the environment in which it is to be situated. Support students to generate potential designs for a technological outcome and describe the physical and functional attributes it would require if it could be justified as a good design leading to an outcome that was fit for purpose.

Indicators

Students can:

• identify examples where technology has changed people's sensory perception and/or physical abilities and discuss the potential short and long term impacts of these;
• identify examples of creative and critical thinking in technological practice;
• identify and categorise knowledge and skills from technology and other disciplines that have informed decisions in technological development and manufacture

Indicators

Students can:

• explain the proper function of existing technological outcomes;
• explain how technological outcomes have been successfully used by end-users for purposes other than what they were originally designed for;
• explain how technological outcomes have been unsuccessfully used by end-users for purposes other than what they were originally designed and discuss the impacts of this;
• explain possible physical and functional attributes for a technological outcome when provided with intended user/s, a purpose, and relevant social, cultural and environmental details to work within.