Years 9 to 10
Technologies
ASTECTDIY910
Years 9 to 10 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 10 students develop and modify innovative digital solutions, decompose real-world problems, and critically evaluate alternative solutions against stakeholder elicited user stories. Students acquire, interpret and model complex data with databases and represent documents as content, structure and presentation. They design and validate algorithms and implement them, including in an object-oriented programming language. Students explain how digital systems manage, control and secure access to data; and model cyber security threats and explore a vulnerability. They use advanced features of digital tools to create interactive content, and to plan, collaborate on and manage agile projects. Students apply privacy principles to manage digital footprints.
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 10 students develop and modify innovative digital solutions, decompose real-world problems, and critically evaluate alternative solutions against stakeholder elicited user stories.
Content descriptorAC9TDI10P04 Processes and production skills
define and decompose real-world problems with design criteria and by interviewing stakeholders to create user stories
Elaborations (5)
- Elaboration creating user stories by interviewing a stakeholder to complete a template such as "As a <type of user>, I want <some goal> so that <some reason>", for example interviewing an amateur athlete to complete the template, such as "As an athlete, I want to ensure my energy intake is high enough to complete a half marathon."
- Elaboration defining the problem with precision and some awareness of scope, for example "How do we encourage people to balance their energy intake and expenditure?" and "Can this be solved in a specified timeframe?"
- Elaboration asking questions that help them define the problem more precisely, for example "How do we measure energy intake?" or "How much energy does each exercise expend?"
- Elaboration recognising the importance of diverse perspectives when defining the problem and devising survey or interview questions to elicit stakeholder needs, for example “What types of exercise count?” and allowing open-ended responses to the exercise they do
- Elaboration exploring how First Nations Australian cultural stories and languages are being preserved with digital systems, for example how communities could record, animate and maintain their connections with culture and language in a contemporary format that resonates with young people to help ensure that vital practices continue
Content descriptorAC9TDI10P07 Processes and production skills
design and prototype the user experience of a digital system
Elaborations (4)
- Elaboration designing engaging user experiences, considering aesthetics, functionality and the feeling of enjoyment and satisfaction of the user
- Elaboration prototyping a user experience, using simple graphical tools that support clicking on an image to change slides or views, for example using a presentation tool or a no-code user interface prototyping tool to design a simple mobile app
- Elaboration considering all aspects of a product as perceived by the users, for example evaluating users’ initial experience of setting up and using a system, or users’ emotional or cultural response to using a digital system
- Elaboration designing documentation, branding and marketing for a digital solution, for example a product demonstration screencast or ‘getting started’ user guide
Content descriptorAC9TDI10P08 Processes and production skills
generate, modify, communicate and critically evaluate alternative designs
Elaborations (3)
- Elaboration eliminating design ideas by evaluating them against the design criteria and user stories, for example in consultation with stakeholders, reviewing the design ideas, making modifications if necessary, and further developing the design of the preferred solution
- Elaboration using a range of ideation techniques to create multiple design ideas for a solution, for example using graphic organisers, role-play and mind mapping to develop and then record a range of ideas without evaluating them first
- Elaboration combining the output from generative AI models and human capital from recognised experts to meet a specific need; for example, using a range of outputs from an image generator as inspiration for modelling a 3D character in a game
Content descriptorAC9TDI10P10 Processes and production skills
evaluate existing and student solutions against the design criteria, user stories, possible future impact and opportunities for enterprise
Elaborations (5)
- Elaboration evaluating how an existing solution detects violations of site rules and imposes sanctions as described in the Safety by Design Vision for Young People, for example enforcing rules using artificial intelligence and human moderators to detect inappropriate behaviour, and consistently imposing consequences
- Elaboration judging the quality of the output of their solution against the design criteria, for example confirming that the stock levels recorded by their inventory management application are accurate within allowed parameters
- Elaboration evaluating how existing products have pivoted to meet the needs of a different set of users, for example how new social media applications continue to expand the types of media people share and the interactions they have online
- Elaboration examining the unintended consequences of an image generation solution implemented using AI; for example, using a model trained on a homogenous population to generate graphics that do not represent the diversity of customers in a website’s target audience
- Elaboration considering the complexities associated with training predictive models to capture events that occur with low probability; for example, in training data for an autonomous vehicle, including a person lying on the road and the correct behaviour for that situation
Students acquire, interpret and model complex data with databases and represent documents as content, structure and presentation.
Content descriptorAC9TDI10K02 Knowledge and understanding
represent documents online as content (text), structure (markup) and presentation (styling) and explain why such representations are important
Elaborations (3)
- Elaboration representing documents by separating the content (the text in the document), the structure (the document structure such as headings and paragraphs) and presentation (how the document is laid out and styled)
- Elaboration writing web pages using HyperText Markup Language (HTML) for the content and structure and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for styling the page and explaining how HTML tags separate content from structure
- Elaboration explaining how representing content, structure and presentation separately allows each of them to be designed, edited, manipulated and stored independently of the others and why this is important
Content descriptorAC9TDI10K03 Knowledge and understanding
investigate simple data compression techniques
Elaborations (3)
- Elaboration using an algorithm to identify patterns in data and represent them in a compressed way, for example repeated pixels in an image with run-length encoding
- Elaboration exploring the difference between lossy and lossless compression and the consequences of each, for example exploring codecs for audiovisual compression such as MP3, MP4 and WAV formats, considering energy requirements of file sizes
- Elaboration examining an image and discussing whether the image quality would be compromised if all the blue pixels of the sky in one row were to be replaced by one token and the number of pixels it represents
Content descriptorAC9TDI10P01 Processes and production skills
develop techniques to acquire, store and validate data from a range of sources using software, including spreadsheets and databases
Elaborations (6)
- Elaboration developing systems that store structured data, for example a movie or travel review website that collects Likert scale ratings and written reviews
- Elaboration developing systems that check data is correct and meaningful using automated techniques and manual analysis, for example, validating movie review data using rules and user interface elements, and detecting bias and fake reviews through simple statistical analysis
- Elaboration developing systems that acquire, use and protect data according to the Australian Privacy Principles, for example ensuring personally identifiable information is not publicly shared without consent and is protected from unauthorised access
- Elaboration accessing and storing data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics in a format that is useful for analysis, for example acquiring data on the population growth across age groups in Australia
- Elaboration identifying strengths and weaknesses of collecting data using different methods, for example online surveys, face-to-face interviews, phone interviews, observation, comments in response to a social media posting, phone logs, browser history and online webcam systems
- Elaboration considering how training data issues such as the zero problem dictate the output from predictive models; for example, a model with many examples of horses and no zebras in its training data is likely to classify all zebras as horses
Content descriptorAC9TDI10P02 Processes and production skills
analyse and visualise data interactively using a range of software, including spreadsheets and databases, to draw conclusions and make predictions by identifying trends and outliers
Elaborations (5)
- Elaboration summarising data, its attributes and the relationships between data sets, identifying trends and outliers to draw conclusions and make predictions, for example summarising data about electorates and their demographics, historical swings and exceptions to predict an election outcome
- Elaboration developing interactive visualisations for exploring complex data, for example population, life expectancy and fertility rate in motion charts
- Elaboration using software to visualise and compare data to identify patterns, relationships and trends, for example investigating emerging trends in Australia's industries
- Elaboration exploring machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence where an algorithm is trained using a data set, for example to classify images into categories
- Elaboration adjusting parameters of an AI model to observe the impact of different factors on predicted outcomes; for example, changing the weighting of different input variables to see how much it changes the model's outputs
Content descriptorAC9TDI10P03 Processes and production skills
model and query entities and their relationships using structured data
Elaborations (3)
- Elaboration modelling entities and processes, their attributes and the relationships between them, for example creating database tables for a movie, a user and their movie review, where a movie has a title, genre and release date, and a review has a movie, a user and their rating and comments
- Elaboration using structured data to help in decision-making, for example creating a data schema for a relational database and building the database, incorporating query and reporting functionality to solve a problem of student choice
- Elaboration interpreting and querying multi-table databases using SQL queries with SELECT, WHERE and simple JOIN/GROUP BY clauses and counting, for example checking that each user has only reviewed each movie once
They design and validate algorithms and implement them, including in an object-oriented programming language.
Content descriptorAC9TDI10P05 Processes and production skills
design algorithms involving logical operators and represent them as flowcharts and pseudocode
Elaborations (4)
- Elaboration designing an algorithm or modifying an existing algorithm to fix, extend or improve it, for example fixing a bug in an algorithm to detect if 2 shapes intersect when the shapes just touch or extending the algorithm to support a new shape
- Elaboration describing algorithms using flowcharts or other appropriate diagram types, for example a decision tree for classifying an animal based on physical characteristics
- Elaboration describing algorithms precisely and succinctly using pseudocode, for example short, unambiguous statements such as IF length of word is greater than 4 AND first letter is a vowel
- Elaboration using Boolean operations (that is, AND, OR and NOT) to express complex conditions in control structures, for example IF [the temperature is above 30 degrees AND people are inside the building] THEN open the windows
Content descriptorAC9TDI10P06 Processes and production skills
validate algorithms and programs by comparing their output against a range of test cases
Elaborations (3)
- Elaboration tracing and debugging an algorithm by identifying when its state is unexpected, why this has occurred, and the changes needed to correct it, for example identifying that a loop has finished one iteration too early
- Elaboration determining boundary test cases and testing that they are handled correctly by a program, for example checking that an intersection is detected when 2 shapes are perfectly aligned
- Elaboration generating invalid input and user errors and testing that they are handled appropriately by a program, for example checking that a program does not crash when text is entered instead of a number
Content descriptorAC9TDI10P09 Processes and production skills
implement, modify and debug modular programs, applying selected algorithms and data structures, including in an object-oriented programming language
Elaborations (7)
- Elaboration writing and editing programs to solve problems using algorithms and data structures in general-purpose and object-oriented programming languages, such as Python, JavaScript or C#
- Elaboration debugging a program by locating an error, modifying the program, and verifying that the changes made are correct, for example identifying the line in the code where an error occurs by reading an error message, printing out the variables to deduce what is causing the problem, and testing any fixes by entering data that could create similar errors
- Elaboration reading and interpreting programs split across files, functions or classes, and modifying them to add functionality, for example using the codebase of an existing adventure game and building new characters, levels or abilities
- Elaboration writing programs that receive structured data from the user that determines the program's behaviour, for example processing a file that contains timestamped data captured by an altitude sensor from a plastic bottle rocket to graph its flight path
- Elaboration applying simple data structures and algorithms appropriately in their programs, for example using an array to store temperature data for a month, a dictionary to store character information in a role-playing game (RPG), and the binary search function from a library to find a value in a sorted array
- Elaboration defining their own classes to model and define the actions that can be performed on data in their programs, for example defining a class for a book that stores information such as the author, title and publisher, and methods that are used to track the book's status in a library management system or store inventory
- Elaboration selecting different types of data structures such as array, record and object to model structured data
Students explain how digital systems manage, control and secure access to data; and model cyber security threats and explore a vulnerability.
Content descriptorAC9TDI10K01 Knowledge and understanding
investigate how hardware and software manage, control and secure access to data in networked digital systems
Elaborations (5)
- Elaboration explaining how the operating system hides the complexity of different hardware from applications, for example applications can treat input from a mouse and touch screen in the same way
- Elaboration exploring how public key cryptography, for example TLS, and hashing, such as SHA-1, secure the storage and transmission of data
- Elaboration configuring a simple network using real or simulated hardware and observing packets moving around the network, for example monitoring packets on simulated switches and networked devices
- Elaboration explaining how domain names and IP addresses allow data to be transmitted to specific networked devices, for example DNS and routing tables
- Elaboration describing elements of access control and explaining why they are necessary, for example authentication and permissions for restricting access to install software to administrators
Content descriptorAC9TDI10P13 Processes and production skills
develop cyber security threat models, and explore a software, user or software supply chain vulnerability
Elaborations (3)
- Elaboration using a data flow diagram to understand how private information moves through a system and when it would be the most likely target of a cyber attack, for example mapping how data moves between the user and server when using a web application, and identifying that sending the data in plaintext would make it susceptible to a man-in-the-middle attack
- Elaboration exploring the impact of a cyber security threat by systematically following the steps involved in bypassing a known vulnerability in their own software, for example manually changing the value stored in a login cookie to that of another user to observe the impact of unauthorised access on the system
- Elaboration explaining how techniques like prompt injection can change the intended behaviour of generative AI models; for example, carefully chosen inputs can circumvent any protections or limitations that may have been included in the design of the model
They use advanced features of digital tools to create interactive content, and to plan, collaborate on and manage agile projects.
Content descriptorAC9TDI10P11 Processes and production skills
select and use emerging digital tools and advanced features to create and communicate interactive content for a diverse audience
Elaborations (5)
- Elaboration locating relevant content by using Boolean operators or artificial intelligence search features of search engines and desktop search, for example queries with 'and' and 'not' or advanced image similarity search
- Elaboration using emerging technologies to add dynamic features to content, for example using a QR code to trigger an augmented reality (AR) overlay of how to use a tool safely in the workshop
- Elaboration incorporating interactive elements into content to assist with analysis, for example adding sliders to visualisations to allow the user to control and view time series data
- Elaboration ensuring content is accessible by using built-in accessibility features, for example using ALT tags in images inside HTML to ensure screen readers can communicate content for people who are visually impaired
- Elaboration combining the output from multiple generative AI sources to communicate a complex idea or narrative; for example, using images, sounds and text from a variety of tools to produce an interactive animation
Content descriptorAC9TDI10P12 Processes and production skills
use simple project management tools to plan and manage individual and collaborative agile projects, accounting for risks and responsibilities
Elaborations (6)
- Elaboration managing collaborative projects using appropriate platforms, for example sharing code development using a collaborative version control tool such as GitHub to plan, decompose and manage a project with their peers
- Elaboration establishing clear lines of responsibility and tasks for all members of a project team, for example assigning roles to all team members and using a spreadsheet to sequence tasks and track progress to ensure all work is completed by a specified deadline
- Elaboration using relevant legislation or guidelines to inform their solutions, for example correctly controlling and treating data collected from users by applying techniques that ensure data protection, privacy and copyright requirements are followed
- Elaboration planning the creation of content using project management tools to mitigate potential risks or project delays, for example incorporating project management techniques including scheduling, revision, iteration and evaluation into common collaboration tools to ensure timely delivery of effective solutions
- Elaboration accounting for appropriate project management responsibilities, 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 incorporating suggestions made by built-in virtual assistants in project planning and organisation tools to streamline and prioritise work; for example, using AI to summarise meeting outcomes, identify important tasks and forecast project risks
Students apply privacy principles to manage digital footprints.
Content descriptorAC9TDI10P14 Processes and production skills
apply the Australian Privacy Principles to critique and manage the digital footprint that existing systems and student solutions collect
Elaborations (2)
- Elaboration critiquing the extent to which online services allow them to control access to their data in line with the Australian Privacy Principles, for example assessing whether their social media accounts allow them to update their contact information if these details change, and who else can see that information on the platform
- Elaboration using the Australian Privacy Principles as a reference to evaluate the steps they are taking to protect user information in their application, for example explaining how they are storing passwords using cryptographic hashing algorithms so that a data breach does not expose their users to security vulnerabilities due to password re-use
This achievement standard describes the expected learning for Years 9 to 10 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 | 1 | 5 |
| Knowledge and understanding | Data representation | 2 | 6 |
| Processes and production skills | Acquiring, managing and analysing data | 3 | 14 |
| Processes and production skills | Investigating and defining | 1 | 5 |
| Processes and production skills | Generating and designing | 4 | 14 |
| Processes and production skills | Producing and implementing | 1 | 7 |
| Processes and production skills | Evaluating | 1 | 5 |
| Processes and production skills | Collaborating and managing | 2 | 11 |
| Processes and production skills | Privacy and security | 2 | 5 |
| Total | 17 | 72 | |
Frequently Asked Questions
What should students know by the end of Years 9 to 10 Digital Technologies?
By the end of Year 10 students develop and modify innovative digital solutions, decompose real-world problems, and critically evaluate alternative solutions against stakeholder elicited user stories. Read the full standard
How many Content Descriptors support this standard?
17 Content Descriptors support this Achievement Standard (Knowledge and understanding: 3, Processes and production skills: 14).
How does this compare to Years 7 to 8?
The Years 7 to 8 Digital Technologies standard (ASTECTDIY78) covers the preceding curriculum level. Standards build progressively, with Years 9 to 10 expectations extending what was introduced in Years 7 to 8.
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.