Interactive Guidelines - Technological capability

Knowledge & Understanding - Technology
Needs & how they are met

New draft Experiences and Outcomes for Technologies (April 2008)

suggest how designing and making meets a variety of needs in their own and other cultures, past, present, and in thinking about the future

describe how effective designing and making takes account of how well products work, their overall attractiveness and cost

Suggest ways in which choice is influenced by development of new products and processes, and by advertising

Describe how technological activity can affect the needs of people and the environment

Technological capability
Resources & how they are managed

Give examples of a range of materials, their sources, properties and applications

Describe how resources, including graphic media, tools, people and energy are used in the development of the made environment

describe how energy conservation is affected by the use of material resources

Technological capability
Processes & how they are applied 

Describe familiar processes that work by controlled sequences of events, including some that are automated

Demonstrate techniques and procedures used to communicate and make solutions to practical problems

Describe a wide range of techniques and procedures involved in production, marketing, use and beyond

Describe how tools, equipment and procedures in their own problem-solving tasks relate to those in the world outside school

Describe energy transfer as a feature of processes.

Skills in Technology
- designing & making
Preparing for tasks

Identify a problem, need and/or opportunity, explain what needs to be done in responding to, and in drawing up, a design brief.

Discuss and analyse relevant information and factors that will help establish design criteria.

Investigate and select a range of resources and processes.

Present a plan logically and effectively, making reference to equipment, systems and manufacturing processes.

Adapt plans to take account of further insight or changing circumstances.

Skills in Technology
- designing & making
Carrying out tasks

Use ideas from a variety of sources to represent a solution to a practical task.

Make considered changes to a plan.

Justify decisions in relation to design criteria.

Select from a range of possibilities, and use resources and processes to carry out
a task safely, hygienically and efficiently.

Skills in Technology
- designing & making
Reviewing & reporting on tasks

Devise, organise and carry out tests of existing and proposed solutions in order to
suggest possible improvements.

Evaluate a design activity in relation to the main design criteria.

Show awareness of the consequences, beneficial or otherwise, of their own
suggestions and decisions, by making evaluative, evidence-based comment on
their own and others’ work.