Technology is intervention by design. It uses intellectual and practical resources to create technological outcomes, which expand human possibilities by addressing needs and realising opportunities.
Design is characterised by innovation and adaptation and is at the heart of technological practice. It is informed by critical and creative thinking and specific design processes.
Effective and ethical design respects the unique relationship that New Zealanders have with their physical environment and embraces the significance of Māori culture and world views in its practice and innovation.
Students will:
Planning for practice
Undertake planning that includes reviewing the effectiveness of past actions and resourcing, exploring implications for future actions and accessing of resources, and consideration of stakeholder feedback, to enable the development of an outcome.
Brief development
Justify the nature of an intended outcome in relation to the need or opportunity. Describe the key attributes identified in stakeholder feedback, which will inform the development of an outcome and its evaluation.
Outcome development and evaluation
Investigate a context to develop ideas for feasible outcomes. Undertake functional modelling that takes account of stakeholder feedback in order to select and develop the outcome that best addresses the key attributes. Incorporating stakeholder feedback, evaluate the outcome’s fitness for purpose in terms of how well it addresses the need or opportunity.
Students will:
Technological modelling
Understand how different forms of functional modelling are used to explore possibilities and to justify decision making and how prototyping can be used to justify refinement of technological outcomes.
Technological products
Understand that materials can be formed, manipulated, and/or transformed to enhance the fitness for purpose of a technological product.
Technological systems
Understand how technological systems employ control to allow for the transformation of inputs to outputs.
Students will:
Characteristics of technology
Understand how technological development expands human possibilities and how technology draws on knowledge from a wide range of disciplines.
Characteristics of technological outcomes
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.