At Home with Family

Message from Caitlin aged 13 years

Caitlin – artist and digital tech maven from South Australia, aged 13 years.

G’day,

I use technology every day. Probably like you, I have been using technology all my life.

I use digital technology to video call family and friends, read electronic books, surf the web, do my homework, play video games, write stories, take photos, write code, create movies, publish websites, build and play with robots and more.

But art is my favourite. I love creating art in the digital world and in the real world.

So, art and technology are ‘my thing’. What’s yours? Sport? Music? Dance? Gaming?

How are you going to change the world? And how will digital technology help you?

Have fun with the Commissioner’s Digital Challenge!

Learn to Speak Robot – A coding challenge for children aged 7 to 12 years. All you need is a laptop or PC that has access to the Internet and then you’re good to go!

You will have completed the Challenge when you have finished any four of the Learn to Speak Robot activities on offer. Each activity may take you about an hour to complete, but this will vary according to your skill level. There are hundreds of activities to choose from. But don’t worry – if you are new to coding, the Beginners Guide is a great place to start.

START CHALLENGE

Space to Dream – Your Challenge is to design a toy or gadget for a child or young person your age who is moving to Mars using design thinking. You will learn to use the five step ‘Design Thinking’ process to help you create your design. You can either create your design using the free 3D design tool supplied by Makers Empire or hand draw your designs onto your ‘MAKE IT!’ Design Sheet.

START CHALLENGE

Zoom Out! is a quick, systems thinking Challenge. To complete Zoom Out all you need is complete just one of the three activities on offer. If you’re working by yourself, the online simulation is the best place to start. It can be finished in roughly 10-20 minutes. If you’re in a group, then check out the group activities on offer too.

START CHALLENGE

PARENTS / CARERS AND FAMILIES IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA

BE A SMARTPARENT

In this digital age, being a SmartParent is about embracing shared family screen time.

Your role in your child’s digital learning journey

You play an important role on your child’s digital learning journey.
Regardless of what they are learning at school, the more you do with your children at home to build their digital skills, the further they will get.

Learn along with them

The Commissioner’s Digital Challenge gives families a way to get involved in digital learning, even if you have limited experience with digital, design or systems thinking. Before you know it, you’ll have learnt some interesting skills yourself!

A shared experience

Most of all, you’ll be strengthening your relationship with your child and encouraging them to keep communicating with you when it comes to technology and what is helpful and what is not. They rely on you as a trusted adult in their life to guide them and if you can establish trust around technology and explore with them from a young age they will be more likely to develop good habits that include checking in with you when they need to.

The Challenge Activities

Choose any four of the free step-by-step activities from here.

Mix it up or take all four from the same page.

Hour of Code

A great place to start as all lessons are step-by-step and there’s something for everyone.

Coding with Star Wars®, Minecraft®, Disney characters from Moana® and Frozen®, Angry Birds®, NBA® and more.

Grok Hour of Code

Never tried coding before? Try some basic Blockly coding with the cute Monster Maker.

Code Club Australia

Step-by-step projects to complete using free downloads to make your own musical instruments with Scratch, create a webpage to tell a joke and send secret messages.

CS Unplugged

Core fundamentals of programming without devices!

You’ll only need items like chalk, paper, pens, pebbles, bits ‘n’ bobs and your digital thinking brain.

Works well as a group activity.

MakeCode

Always wanted a micro:bit device but don’t have one?

Use the free online micro:bit simulator here to make a flashing heart or a game where you can play ‘rock paper scissors’. Plus lots more to try here.

DTH lessons

Digital thinking activities across various subject areas such as Health, the Arts, Geography and Science. This is a great resource for educators.

Don’t know where to begin?

Check out the Guide for Beginners

Guide for beginners

Cody Button’s Recommended Activities for Newbies

Cody Buttons, the Commissioner’s Robot, likes to help human beings so has prepared this handy guide setting out recommended lessons to complete the Challenge for beginners.

Code a dance party

Get creative and code dance moves to your favourite songs.
Unplugged version available for those without devices.

Coding with Minecraft

Learn the basics of programming in familiar territory.

Moana

Wayfinding with code.

Code with Star Wars

Build a Galaxy with Code.

Rock Band

Code your own musical instruments.

Make cute monsters with block-based coding

Code a cute monster with block-based coding.

EXTEND YOUR DIGITAL LEARNING HERE

Take a look through the extended resources

Access the full range of free resources, videos, materials and challenges to take you further on your digital learning journey.

Benefits

Ally Watson

CEO & Co-Founder - Code Like A Girl

The future is technology. Women are at risk of losing out on tomorrow’s best job opportunities. The situation presents a unique opportunity for females to step up and take action. The future is very much looking to artificial intelligence, and if it’s only men building that intelligence there’s going to be continued bias in the technology of the future.

Paul Clapton-Caputo

Leader at Learning Technologies, Leadership Development, Department for Education ǀ Director at Educators SA ǀ Principal Consultant at EdTechSA

This Challenge opens young minds to thinking technologically. It will grow diversity and inclusion and opportunity for those that will soon lead this work in creating tools and systems yet unimagined. Human, cultural and systems diversity require the chance for every child and young person in South Australia to be part of this thinking and mix.

Professor Katrina Falkner

Lead, Computer Science Education Research (CSER) Group | Lead, Centre for Distributed and Intelligent Technologies - Modelling and Analysis

It is essential for our next generation to not only learn about how digital technology works and how to use it, but also how to create new technologies. Understanding how we create technology solutions empowers people in solving their own problems and those of their communities in ways that truly address their needs.

Dr Rebecca Vivian

Research Fellow, Computer Science Education Research (CSER) Group

Technology increasingly has an impact on every field today – including finance, fashion, agriculture, business, art, medicine and more! Providing opportunities for children to develop computational thinking and digital skills is fundamental to building their capacity to be problem-solvers and solution-creators in a digital world.

Professor James Curran

Academic Director at Australian Computing Academy | Director at National Computer Science School | CEO of GROK Learning

Digital technologies make thoughts concrete without requiring the physical world. Any problem that can be turned into data, you can manipulate and interact with in such a way that you could change the world – and there’s nothing more amazing than that.

Acknowledgement of Country

We respectfully acknowledge and celebrate the Traditional Owners of the lands throughout South Australia and we pay our respects to their Elders – and to past, present and future generations of their children and young people.

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