Project Description
Innovation and Technology
Technology ignites innovation and advancements in industry. Students explore innovation over time, and engage in activities to understand how technology including Artificial Intelligence (AI) works and its applications in everyday lives and industry.
Level: Suitable for Year 3 to Year 6.
Duration: Available in a 60 or 90 minute format. We recommend a 90 minute format if budget and timetabling constraints allow.
Numbers: Each workshop can cater to a maximum of 30 children. However, smaller groups have better access to equipment and the facilitator.
State: ONLY AVAILABLE IN VIC.
Learning Outcomes
Understand how technology has changed over time.
Learn what AI is and where its place lies in society and industry.
Understand how computers work.
Explore biomimicry and how technology is based on the natural world around us.
Activities
Students explore innovation and the importance of innovation in our world.
Explore how technology has evolved over time in the ability to communicate messages. Paper code & fibre optic innovation activity. How did simple coding become ‘computer language’ to give commands and communicate messages? Students use decoding skills to interpret and understand and send messages. Explanation and demonstration of how fibre optics work in communicating messages.
Students learn about Artificial Intelligence and some of its applications in the real world. Students interact with AI technology by trying to race or beat an AI program. Can a computer really make human decisions? How is this possible? Explore how AI can use information to make decisions.
Students work in pairs to explore in engaging and practical way that a computer can only do what it tells you to do. Students become both computers and programmers. Explore how accurate instruction ‘commands’ are essential for a computer to successfully perform a task.
Students have fun at the Tech and AI Exploration Tables including: circuits, sensors and modules, robot obstacle course, evolution of innovation and technology, quick draw – ‘be the computer’, AI facial or colour recognition and the biomimicry test station.
90 minute workshops also include the following:
Many of our man-made technological solutions draw inspiration from living or natural things. Students will explore the concept of biomimicry and use materials to build and or test a ‘robot’ hand and apply this knowledge to how this technology is implemented across industries throughout the world.
Victorian Curriculum Links
Scientific understandings, discoveries, and inventions are used to inform personal and community decisions and to solve problems that directly affect people’s lives (VCSSU073)
Define simple problems, and describe and follow a sequence of steps and decisions involving branching and user input (algorithms) needed to solve them (VCDTCD023)
Examine the main components of common digital systems, and how such digital systems may connect together to form networks to transmit data (VCDTDS026)
