Years 7 to 8
Technologies
ASTECTDIY78
Years 7 to 8 Digital Technologies Achievement Standard
6 statements aligned to content descriptors and elaborations
Achievement standard (as ACARA publishes it)
Achievement standard
Click any sentence to jump to its statement and linked content descriptors.
By the end of Year 8 students develop and modify creative digital solutions, decompose real-world problems, and evaluate alternative solutions against user stories and design criteria. Students acquire, interpret and model data with spreadsheets and represent data with integers and binary. They design and trace algorithms and implement them in a general-purpose programming language. Students select appropriate hardware for particular tasks, explain how data is transmitted and secured in networks, and identify cyber security threats. They select and use a range of digital tools efficiently and responsibly to create, locate and share content; and to plan, collaborate on and manage projects. Students manage their digital footprint.
The 6 achievement standard statements
Open a statement to see the content descriptors ACARA links to it, then open a descriptor's elaborations.
By the end of Year 8 students develop and modify creative digital solutions, decompose real-world problems, and evaluate alternative solutions against user stories and design criteria.
Content descriptorAC9TDI8P04 Processes and production skills
define and decompose real-world problems with design criteria and by creating user stories
Elaborations (4)
- Elaboration framing a problem in terms of what we know, why it is important and the outcome we want, for example matching the items in your fridge to possible recipes to reduce food waste
- Elaboration asking a series of questions and sub-questions to understand the problem and breaking it down into manageable parts, for example “How do we keep track of what items are in the pantry? Are there any dietary requirements that need to be considered?”
- Elaboration using a template such as "As a <type of user>, I want <some goal> so that <some reason>", for example "As a user with a visual impairment I want to be able to get the news on my smartphone so that I can keep up with my world"
- Elaboration making predictions about future population distribution of First Nations Australians based on identified trends, for example analysing and visualising data using spreadsheets and databases on their population growth in metropolitan areas
Content descriptorAC9TDI8P07 Processes and production skills
design the user experience of a digital system
Elaborations (3)
- Elaboration designing a user interface or experience to satisfy design criteria and user stories, using digital tools, for example sketch multiple pages of a website with wireframes, storyboards and simple branding guidelines for colours and styling
- Elaboration considering the factors of why a user might buy and use a product, in addition to its utility, for example how aligning the brand with the user’s values and identity contributes to its appeal
- Elaboration exploring the evolution of a user interface, for example comparing the design and branding of different search engines over time
Content descriptorAC9TDI8P08 Processes and production skills
generate, modify, communicate and evaluate alternative designs
Elaborations (3)
- Elaboration reviewing and modifying a preferred design as part of the iterative development approach, for example making changes to overcome limitations of the design or better satisfy the user stories
- Elaboration using concept maps, wireframes or other diagrams to record and discuss the generated ideas, for example creating and discussing wireframes of a music streaming service, evaluating it against design criteria and user stories, such as the needs of diverse users
- Elaboration comparing multiple outputs from a generative model to determine the most suitable; for example, using AI tools to generate multiple prototypes of a user interface and selecting the design or features that best address users’ needs
Content descriptorAC9TDI8P10 Processes and production skills
evaluate existing and student solutions against the design criteria, user stories and possible future impact
Elaborations (4)
- Elaboration evaluating how an existing solution ensures users can control their safety and experience online as described in the Safety by Design Vision for Young People, for example ensuring privacy settings are comprehensive, easy to use and set to maximum protection by default
- Elaboration reviewing the requirements of a user story to ensure that their solution meets the user's needs, for example making sure that recommendations offered by their music application are of a similar genre to the rest of the user's library
- Elaboration judging existing solutions on the basis of their possible impact on the economy, environment or society, for example cloud computing services decrease data loss but require vast amounts of electricity to power the servers
- Elaboration discussing the risks and consequences of AI-generated content on social media platforms; for example, the potential for the spread of misinformation due to high volumes of automatically generated and intentionally misleading content being posted
Students acquire, interpret and model data with spreadsheets and represent data with integers and binary.
Content descriptorAC9TDI8K03 Knowledge and understanding
investigate how digital systems represent text, image and audio data using integers
Elaborations (4)
- Elaboration explaining how digital systems represent text as a sequence of individual characters numbered using the Unicode character set, for example upper-case and lower-case letters, punctuation and emoji
- Elaboration explaining how digital systems represent audio using whole numbers for the amplitude of the soundwave at a given sampling rate, for example -32,768 to 32,767 for 16-bit audio at 44,100 Hz
- Elaboration explaining how digital systems represent bitmap images (for example PNG and JPEG) as the colour of each pixel in separate red, green and blue (RGB) channels ranging from 0 to 255, and represent Scalable Vector graphics (SVG) using the geometry of lines and shapes
- Elaboration investigating how a digital system converts audio data to integers as it records, stores and outputs sound, for example using the Welcome to Country app to understand the local history and Traditional Owners of the lands which students learn on to inform the programming of an Acknowledgement of Country in a local First Nations Australian language
Content descriptorAC9TDI8K04 Knowledge and understanding
explain how and why digital systems represent integers in binary
Elaborations (3)
- Elaboration explaining how whole numbers can be represented in binary, for example counting in binary from 0 to 31, and recognising that one byte = 8 bits, which can represent from 0 to 255
- Elaboration explaining how digital systems represent data in binary, for example by converting a character to its Unicode value, then converting that value into binary
- Elaboration explaining how circuits can perform binary operations represented as on/off states, for example showing how circuits with 2 switches can represent AND or OR gates
Content descriptorAC9TDI8P01 Processes and production skills
acquire, store and validate data from a range of sources using software, including spreadsheets and databases
Elaborations (5)
- Elaboration acquiring data to answer questions for their own investigations, for example answering "Does the canteen sell the right food?" by designing a survey to collect food preferences data and accessing canteen sales data
- Elaboration judging how meaningful data is to a question, its correctness and how up to date the data is, for example "Does age affect the chance of cyclist injury?", "Are self-reported accidents reliable?" and "Is the data before cycleways existed relevant?"
- Elaboration storing acquired data using specialised and general software appropriate for how it will be accessed and manipulated, for example a spreadsheet for visualisation or a pre-defined database for filtering and queries
- Elaboration acquiring, storing and validating data from a reputable source, such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics, to analyse the geographic distribution of First Nations Australians, with the aim to highlight past and emerging trends
- Elaboration ensuring that the data used to train an AI model minimises any potential biases in its output and is representative of the target audience; for example, training a model on data collected from a single demographic group may not produce correct outputs for a more diverse population
Content descriptorAC9TDI8P02 Processes and production skills
analyse and visualise data using a range of software, including spreadsheets and databases, to draw conclusions and make predictions by identifying trends
Elaborations (4)
- Elaboration summarising data based on its attributes to identify trends and make predictions, for example sorting crime data by type of offence, showing that burglaries have decreased over time to predict fewer burglaries will happen next year
- Elaboration visualising multidimensional data by choosing appropriate graphs, for example a scatter plot of food prices and sales, coloured by each food’s sugar content, or diagrams such as a social network diagram and maps of crime rates by location to reveal trends, outliers or other information
- Elaboration using an AI model with a natural language interface to generate queries to perform analysis; for example, describing a database schema and asking the model to generate an SQL query to find results that match a set of criteria
- Elaboration comparing the analysis performed by a trained predictive AI model with other analysis techniques; for example, comparing the output from a classification model against data tagged manually to verify its accuracy and effectiveness
Content descriptorAC9TDI8P03 Processes and production skills
model and query the attributes of objects and events using structured data
Elaborations (3)
- Elaboration modelling objects and events as structured data, that is, the attributes relevant to the task, for example products in the canteen and the sale of those products, with attributes such as the product name, price, quantity and nutritional value
- Elaboration using a spreadsheet table to model objects and events, including choosing appropriate formats for each column, and filtering and sorting rows to answer questions
- Elaboration interpreting and querying single-table databases using visual or simple SQL queries with SELECT, WHERE and ORDER BY clauses, for example answering queries in a database for a historical event
They design and trace algorithms and implement them in a general-purpose programming language.
Content descriptorAC9TDI8P05 Processes and production skills
design algorithms involving nested control structures and represent them using flowcharts and pseudocode
Elaborations (3)
- Elaboration designing an algorithm or modifying an existing algorithm to fix an error or change functionality, for example calculating the coins and notes needed for an amount of money and changing the algorithm to handle new denominations
- Elaboration describing algorithms precisely in pseudocode (structured English) or with flowcharts for each part of the problem, for example using separate flowcharts to describe the purchase of an item and the giving of change during the purchase
- Elaboration describing algorithms with nested control structures, including a nested if, for example IF it is raining THEN [IF parents are home THEN drive to school]; or an IF inside a loop, for example REPEAT [select the largest coin smaller than the remaining total, and subtract it] UNTIL the remainder is zero
Content descriptorAC9TDI8P06 Processes and production skills
trace algorithms to predict output for a given input and to identify errors
Elaborations (3)
- Elaboration following an algorithm precisely to confirm it produces the expected output for the given input, for example desk check with a table of input, variables and output
- Elaboration specifying test cases and comparing the expected and actual output to determine the correctness of an algorithm, for example a test case of the change-calculating algorithm could have input $1.45 and expected output 1 x $1, 2 x 20c and 1 x 5c coins
- Elaboration following instructions for making woven baskets or nets by hand, as done by First Nations Australians, and making predictions of how the instructions would need to be modified to enable the item to be produced through automated manufacturing processes
Content descriptorAC9TDI8P09 Processes and production skills
implement, modify and debug programs involving control structures and functions in a general-purpose programming language
Elaborations (5)
- Elaboration writing and editing programs to solve problems using branching, iteration, variables and functions in a general-purpose programming language, such as Python, JavaScript or C#
- Elaboration reading and interpreting an existing program and modifying the code to change functionality and fix errors, for example taking existing code for a weather forecasting app that includes temperatures and improving the output to include extra information such as rainfall, UV levels and air quality
- Elaboration writing a program that receives data from the environment to change the program behaviour, for example reading moisture level data from a soil sensor and switching on the watering system
- Elaboration writing a program that contains nested control structures to perform more complicated branching and decisions, for example using an IF statement inside a loop to count the warm days from an array containing temperature data only when the temperature for each day is more than 20 degrees Celsius
- Elaboration defining and using a function that produces different output based on the argument(s) it receives, for example a function that receives the name of an actor from user input, and searches a file or database to return a list of movies that actor appears in
Students select appropriate hardware for particular tasks, explain how data is transmitted and secured in networks, and identify cyber security threats.
Content descriptorAC9TDI8K01 Knowledge and understanding
explain how hardware specifications affect performance and select appropriate hardware for particular tasks and workloads
Elaborations (4)
- Elaboration explaining how hardware specifications affect what, and how quickly, a digital system can perform tasks, for example how different bandwidth networks affect download speed and lag or how much random access memory (RAM) is needed for multimedia authoring
- Elaboration selecting appropriate hardware for particular tasks, for example choosing a powerful graphics card for computer gaming or large external storage for video editing
- Elaboration considering how First Nations Australians communities in areas classified as remote often share access to smartphone and internet services, and how the hardware specifications of these devices affect performance, for example where immediate and extended families share and access data through a single smartphone or device
- Elaboration explaining how the specifications of components in a system impact the speed with which AI models can be trained; for example, GPUs are more efficient at performing the mathematical calculations necessary for training generative AI than CPUs
Content descriptorAC9TDI8K02 Knowledge and understanding
investigate how data is transmitted and secured in wired and wireless networks including the internet
Elaborations (4)
- Elaboration describing physical networks and comparing their properties, for example the bandwidth, latency and reliability of wired versus wireless networks
- Elaboration explaining why cryptography is necessary for securing data, for example transmitting credit card details over the internet
- Elaboration exploring simple encryption and decryption algorithms, for example ROT13 and XOR
- Elaboration explaining how problems occur in network communication and how they can be solved, for example routers can drop packets and how Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) uses acknowledgements to confirm packets have been received
Content descriptorAC9TDI8P13 Processes and production skills
explain how multi-factor authentication protects an account when the password is compromised and identify phishing and other cyber security threats
Elaborations (2)
- Elaboration explaining how multi-factor authentication prevents unauthorised access by prompting the account owner for a token or single-use password, for example demonstrating how a funds transfer from their bank account requires not only logging in, but provision of a one-time password received via SMS
- Elaboration identifying the common techniques used in phishing scams to identify and exploit susceptible users, for example using an email address from an unofficial domain when pretending to be an online retailer, or including grammatical errors to help filter out users who are more likely to detect the scam
They select and use a range of digital tools efficiently and responsibly to create, locate and share content; and to plan, collaborate on and manage projects.
Content descriptorAC9TDI8P11 Processes and production skills
select and use a range of digital tools efficiently, including unfamiliar features, to create, locate and communicate content, consistently applying common conventions
Elaborations (6)
- Elaboration locating relevant content from multiple sources, exploring advanced search functions and targeted criteria, for example using specific filters such as date range, image size, file type and usage licence
- Elaboration selecting and using appropriate digital tools, for example when participating in online lessons or planning sessions using a common video conferencing tool
- Elaboration applying common conventions consistently when creating content, for example organising content in paragraphs and within a heading hierarchy, writing captions to describe images and using gender-inclusive pronouns, where appropriate
- Elaboration creating logical storage locations for project assets and resources together with an outline to ensure collaborators are up to date, for example creating a logical storage area for a group to share content and ideas in a timely manner about the canteen issue they are solving
- Elaboration using effective prompts with generative AI models to create output that is better suited to the problem being solved; for example, specifying the voice, tone and brevity for a persuasive news article with a restrictive word limit
- Elaboration using a progressive series of prompts with generative models to refine output to improve its correctness; for example, performing translation from one language to another and instructing the model to correct errors in translation
Content descriptorAC9TDI8P12 Processes and production skills
select and use a range of digital tools efficiently and responsibly to share content online, and plan and manage individual and collaborative agile projects
Elaborations (5)
- Elaboration collaborating effectively online using cloud storage, for example setting up and managing a shared space in an online repository to co-develop content for an app which presents and checks safety aspects of working in a specific setting such as a kitchen, lab, workshop or greenhouse
- Elaboration displaying empathy for diverse cultural expectations when participating in teams and in online communities, for example showing sensitivity around images or names of deceased people, and valuing the intellectual property and perspectives of others
- Elaboration demonstrating agile project management skills and understanding, for example when collaborating with First Nations Australians’ community groups to develop digital solutions to projects: following cultural protocols, including relevant permissions and attributions; acknowledging diversity, capability and strength; and addressing risks and responsibilities such as privacy, security and accuracy of data
- Elaboration determining and recording the tasks, responsibilities and timeframes for a collaborative project, for example using a spreadsheet to record tasks and their sequence, critical dates and who is responsible for each task so a project can be finished on time
- Elaboration using AI tools to decompose high-level instructions into more detailed steps to assist with completing a task; for example, asking an AI model to break down the steps involved in building a website from scratch
Students manage their digital footprint.
Content descriptorAC9TDI8P14 Processes and production skills
investigate and manage the digital footprint existing systems and student solutions collect and assess if the data is essential to their purpose
Elaborations (5)
- Elaboration investigating the ethical obligations of individuals and organisations regarding ownership and privacy of data and information by researching an online platform’s privacy policy for data collection, use and storage information and discussing impacts on digital footprint
- Elaboration reviewing and managing their digital footprint across online digital tools that they use, for example selecting their default privacy and sharing settings on social media accounts
- Elaboration investigating how recommendation algorithms used in media services rely on data that tracks user habits, for example how music streaming services generate playlists that contain songs from genres and artists that are similar to those you listen to regularly
- Elaboration assessing the appropriateness and relevance of data collected by surveys from other students and organisations they complete online, for example identifying that providing your address data is not necessary for a survey asking about your food preferences but providing the address for the Census would be appropriate
- Elaboration explaining the risks associated with sharing personal data due to the ease with which generative AI models can create new content; for example, from short videos and audio recordings it is possible for convincing deepfake videos to be generated and distributed for malicious purposes
This achievement standard describes the expected learning for Years 7 to 8 Digital Technologies. Use it to plan teaching and assessment with the Australian Curriculum v9.
At a Glance
| Strand | Substrand | CDs | Elaborations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Knowledge and understanding | Digital systems | 2 | 8 |
| Knowledge and understanding | Data representation | 2 | 7 |
| Processes and production skills | Acquiring, managing and analysing data | 3 | 12 |
| Processes and production skills | Investigating and defining | 1 | 4 |
| Processes and production skills | Generating and designing | 4 | 12 |
| Processes and production skills | Producing and implementing | 1 | 5 |
| Processes and production skills | Evaluating | 1 | 4 |
| Processes and production skills | Collaborating and managing | 2 | 11 |
| Processes and production skills | Privacy and security | 2 | 7 |
| Total | 18 | 70 | |
Frequently Asked Questions
What should students know by the end of Years 7 to 8 Digital Technologies?
By the end of Year 8 students develop and modify creative digital solutions, decompose real-world problems, and evaluate alternative solutions against user stories and design criteria. Students acquire, interpret and model data with spreadsheets and represent data with integers and binary. Read the full standard
How many Content Descriptors support this standard?
18 Content Descriptors support this Achievement Standard (Knowledge and understanding: 4, Processes and production skills: 14).
How does this compare to Years 5 to 6?
The Years 5 to 6 Digital Technologies standard (ASTECTDIY56) covers the preceding curriculum level. Standards build progressively, with Years 7 to 8 expectations extending what was introduced in Years 5 to 6.
Is this from the latest Australian Curriculum?
Yes, this Achievement Standard is from the Australian Curriculum version 9.0 (AC v9), the most current version published by ACARA.