Technology - Department Overview
Technology is a term that refers to the equipment and processes people use to enhance, maintain, manipulate and modify their environment and resources to support human endeavour. It involves the purposeful application of knowledge, skills, equipment, materials and information to create useful products.
In keeping with technology's widespread application in society, students and staff at the Academy use a range of equipment, materials and resources to create products. The goals of the Technology Courses are to provide students with the challenge of designing and producing products that satisfy the needs of the user and the wider community.
The courses aim to:
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Develop the student's knowledge and skills in using a variety of equipment and resources and an understanding of the principles for using equipment safely
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To develop a systematic and creative approach to generate technological solutions
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Allow the students to explore and assess the past and potential consequences of using technology
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To generate a sense of self-confidence and self-sufficiency in dealing with technology.
Technology incorporates the Interdisciplinary Learning strand under the Victorian Essential Learning Standards The Interdisciplinary Learning strand identifies a range of knowledge, skills and behaviours which cross disciplinary boundaries and are essential to ensuring students are prepared as active learners and problem-solvers for success at school and beyond. This strand focuses on ways of thinking, communicating, conceiving and realising ideas and information. It assists students to develop the capacity to design, create and evaluate processes as a way of developing creativity and innovation.
Within the Interdisciplinary Learning strand the learning domains are:
Communication
Communication helps to construct all learning and is central to the capacity to demonstrate and convey what one has learned in different contexts and to different people. This domain assists students to understand that language and discourse differ in different disciplines and that there is a need to learn the particular literacies involved in each.
Design, Creativity and Technology
Students develop the knowledge, skills and behaviours related to investigating and designing using appropriate planning processes and design briefs; creating and developing ideas, applying information, and seeking and testing innovative alternatives; producing, including the selection and safe use of appropriate tools, equipment, materials and/or processes to meet the requirements of design briefs; analysing and evaluating both processes and products including, where relevant, any broader environmental, social, cultural and economic factors.
The knowledge, skills and behaviours in this domain enable students to use ICT to access, process, manage and present information; model and control events; construct new understandings; and communicate with others. Students use ICT and strategies to monitor learning patterns, to process data to create solutions and information products that demonstrate understanding, and to share their work with others in ethical, legal and respectful ways.
Thinking Processes
This domain encompasses a range of cognitive, affective and metacognitive knowledge, skills and behaviours which are essential for effective functioning in society both within and beyond school. The study of thinking enables students to acquire strategies for thinking related to inquiry, processing information, reasoning, problem solving, evaluation and reflection.
At the Academy we cover all four domains separately and combined in different courses. Each course outline has a curriculum focus and strategies listed, but most importantly are the outcomes that the students must achieve by the duration of the course.
Each domain has its own content, but islinked through the "Technology Process" of investigating, designing, producing and analysing and evaluating.
When investigating students assess the nature and circumstances of problems or needs and determine what has to be produced to solve them.
In designing, students generate plans and proposals for solving problems. They consider options, identify priorities and constraints, experiment with different ways to achieve the ends and calculate and predict consequences.
In producing, students translate designs and plans into products and processes. They experience the 'making and doing'part of technology.
When analysing and evaluating, students measure and test products, applying developed criteria and report on their findings.
Frank Bonavia - Head of Information Technology
Vicki Rowe - Head of Food Technology