Course Syllabus

Design can be responsive to identified needs.

Complex tasks require the acquisition of additional skills.

Complex tasks may require multiple tools and technologies.

Curricular Competencies

Content

Students are expected to be able to do the following:

Applied Design

Understanding context

•    Empathize with potential users to find issues and uncover needs and potential design opportunities

Defining

•    Choose a design opportunity

•    Identify key features or potential users and their requirements

•    Identify criteria for success and any constraints

Ideating

•    Generate potential ideas and add to others’ ideas

•    Screen ideas against criteria and constraints

•    Evaluate personal, social, and environmental impacts and ethical considerations

•    Choose an idea to pursue

Prototyping

•    Identify and use sources of information

•    Develop a plan that identifies key stages and resources

•    Explore and test a variety of materials for effective use

•    Construct a first version of the product or a prototype, as appropriate, making changes to tools, materials, and procedures as needed

•    Record iterations of prototyping

The curriculum is designed to be offered in modules or courses of various lengths. Schools are required to provide students with the equivalent of a fullyear “course” in Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies. This “course” can be made up of one or more modules. Schools may choose from among the modules listed below or develop new modules that use the Curricular Competencies of Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies 8 with locally developed content. Locally developed modules can be offered in addition to, or instead of, the modules in the provincial curriculum.

Robotics

Students are expected to know the following:

•    uses of robotics in local contexts

•    types of sensors

•    user and autonomous control systems

•    uses and applications of end effectors

•    movement- and sensor-based responses

•    program flow

•    interpretation and use of schematics for assembling circuits

•    identification and applications of components 

•    various platforms for robotics programming

Curricular Competencies

Content

Testing

•    Test the first version of the product or the prototype

•    Gather peer and/or user and/or expert feedback and inspiration

•    Make changes, troubleshoot, and test again

Making

•    Identify and use appropriate tools, technologies, and materials  for production

•    Make a plan for production that includes key stages, and carry it out, making changes as needed

•    Use materials in ways that minimize waste

Sharing

•    Decide on how and with whom to share their product • Demonstrate their product and describe their process, using appropriate terminology and providing reasons for their selected solution and modifications

•    Evaluate their product against their criteria and explain how it contributes to the individual, family, community, and/or environment

•    Reflect on their design thinking and processes, and evaluate their ability to work effectively both as individuals and collaboratively in  a group, including their ability to share and maintain an efficient  co-operative work space

•    Identify new design issues

Applied Skills

•    Demonstrate an awareness of precautionary and emergency safety procedures in both physical and digital environments

•    Identify and evaluate the skills and skill levels needed, individually  or as a group, in relation to a specific task, and develop them as needed

Curricular Competencies

Applied Technologies

•    Select, and as needed learn about, appropriate tools and technologies to extend their capability to complete a task

•    Identify the personal, social, and environmental impacts, including unintended negative consequences, of the choices they make about technology use

•    Identify how the land, natural resources, and culture influence the development and use of tools and technologies

                                                                                                                                           APPLIED DESIGN, SKILLS, AND TECHNOLOGIES

Curricular Competencies – Elaborations                                                                                                                                                       Grade 8

•    Empathize: share the feelings and understand the needs of others to inform design

•    users: may include self, peers, younger children, family or community members, customers, plants, or animals • Defining: setting parameters

•    constraints: limiting factors such as task or user requirements, materials, expense, environmental impact, issues of appropriation, and knowledge that is considered sacred

•    Ideating: forming ideas or concepts

•    sources of information: including seeking knowledge from other people as experts (e.g., First Peoples Elders), secondary sources, and collective pools of knowledge in communities and collaborative atmospheres

•    product: for example, a physical product, a process, a system, a service, or a designed environment

•    iterations: repetitions of a process with the aim of approaching a desired result

•    technologies: things that extend human capabilities

•    share: may include showing to others, use by others, giving away, or marketing and selling