Year 9 OVERVIEW
This year 9 course is designed for a half year, approximately 50 contact hours, compulsory unit for all year 9 students that covers CTDT:PO4 and DDDO:PO 2. The course is broken into 4 topics.
Curriculum Checklist for Computational Thinking and Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes
This is a spreadsheet that has been created so you can track student progress for those who don't currently have a system in place.
Click the link to open a spreadsheet where you can record progress of students against the Progress outcomes for CT and DDDO. Simply make a copy and import student names and then tick the checkboxes as student meet criterai as the complete topics in Year 9 and 10.
Topics Covered
Whilst there are lots of areas that can be covered these are the key areas chosen to focus on as they covered what is needed to meet the progress outcomes. The approach of less is more has been taken.
Topic 1
Image Manipulation
Introduction to DDDO
This can be done as either a 8 or 12 contact hours unit depending on if students do the shorter Name Plate unit or longer Digital Mihimihi.
The ideas is to have a bit of fun, learn some new skills whilst getting used to the DT environment, the basics of logging into the computers, and file management as well as helping you learn about the students.
Topic 2
Computer Science
Introduction to Computational Thinking
Approximately 12 contact hours covering:
Binary
Image and Text compression
Decomposition of complicated problems
Algorithms
Each topic (other than algorithms) has a short end of topic test at the end which is used to mark the topic. Algorithms is tested under the next unit.
The idea is that the tasks students complete are assessed as completed/not completed rather than increasing teacher workload of marking as the many self marking End of Topic task is the assessment
Topic 3
Programming
Covers more Computational Thinking
Introduction to Programming
Approximately 10 Contact hours
Programming using Scratch so regardless of programming experience everyone can achieve. Additionally, the focus is on teaching sequence selection and iteration though not formally as such.
For those that have come in with previous programming experience they are to complete tasks to check they have the fundamentals and then they are able to move to the Year 10 course on Python.
Topic 4
Small Passion Project
Major DDDO Project
This is an opportunity for students to created something they are interested in within the parameters of characters.
They work through a mini design process and are able to see how they can use one design and adapt it to create a range of different outcomes depending on the resources available to your school. We have found that starting off with making stickers is highly engaging especially to female students and students are then free to choose what they create afterwards.
This gives them a taste of project based learning which they will further develop in Year 10 and follow in Level 1, 2 and 3.
