Online safety: Digital Technologies

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Digital Technologies

The Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies can provide students with practical opportunities to develop design thinking skills. When working with and building digital systems, the design thinking process places the user and their safety at the forefront of the design. The subject helps students to become innovative creators of digital solutions, effective users of digital systems, and critical consumers of information conveyed by digital systems. Digital Technologies delivers authentic learning challenges that foster curiosity, confidence, persistence, innovation, creativity, respect and cooperation. These qualities, supported by appropriate online behaviour, enrich the development of information systems to make sense of complex ideas and relationships.

Digital Technologies requires the communication and the collaboration of local, regional and global citizens who are capable of actively and ethically communicating and collaborating.  Online safety awareness assists students to identify risks, social contexts and legal responsibilities when engaging online. At the same time, Safety by Design principles place the safety and rights of users at the centre of the design, development and deployment of digital technologies. Authentic consultation, typically in groups throughout the design process, encourages students to build empathy, develop respectful relationships and conflict management skills, and ensure that digital solutions are appropriate. The Digital Technologies curriculum is designed for students from Foundation to Year 8. This subject is offered as an elective to students In Years 9 and 10.

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Content descriptions with elaborations:

Explore how people safely use common information systems to meet information, communication and recreation needs (ACTDIP005)

  • sharing and describing ways that common information systems can be used to meet communication needs, for example computers can be used as phones and social networking tools allowing communication between families living in different regions
  • recognising and discussing the need for cyber safety when using online information systems, for example recognising that shared personal information can be used for undesirable purposes and that using a password is a means of protecting identity
  • sharing ideas about the ways information systems are being used by families and friends in everyday life, for example comparing current digital play equipment with play equipment of 20 years ago

Create and organise ideas and information using information systems independently and with others, and share these with known people in safe online environments (ACTDIP006)

  • making ethical decisions when using images for public viewing and using work of others, for example asking the questions 'What is fair and just?' to compare images of events or activities and decide whether or not to publish
  • participating in safe online environments, for example sharing ideas and information through intranets, messaging only to people they know, bookmarked websites and moderated online spaces

Content descriptions with elaborations:

Recognise and explore patterns in data and represent data as pictures, symbols and diagrams (ACTDIK002)

  • learning about how data are represented by changing pixel density (resolution) in a photograph with support and noting the change in file size to successfully email to a friend

Explore how people safely use common information systems to meet information, communication and recreation needs (ACTDIP005)

  • sharing and describing ways that common information systems can be used to meet communication needs, for example computers can be used as phones and social networking tools allowing communication between families living in different regions
  • recognising and discussing the need for cyber safety when using online information systems, for example recognising that shared personal information can be used for undesirable purposes and that using a password is a means of protecting identity
  • sharing ideas about the ways information systems are being used by families and friends in everyday life, for example comparing current digital play equipment with play equipment of 20 years ago

Create and organise ideas and information using information systems independently and with others, and share these with known people in safe online environments (ACTDIP006)

  • making ethical decisions when using images for public viewing and using work of others, for example asking the questions 'What is fair and just?' to compare images of events or activities and decide whether or not to publish
  • participating in safe online environments, for example sharing ideas and information through intranets, messaging only to people they know, bookmarked websites and moderated online spaces