Unpack the Curriculum

Understand the Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies

Australian Digital Technologies Curriculum:

Data representation

How data is represented and structured symbolically for storage and communication, by people and in digital systems.
Data representation
F-2 Unpack > 3-4 Unpack > 5-6 Unpack > 7-8 Unpack > 9-10 Unpack >

F-2

Recognise and explore patterns in data and represent data as pictures, symbols and diagrams (ACTDIK002)

3-4

Recognise different types of data and explore how the same data can be represented in different ways (ACTDIK008)

5-6

Examine how whole numbers are used to represent all data in digital systems (ACTDIK015)

7-8

Investigate how digital systems represent text, image and audio data in binary (ACTDIK024)

9-10

Analyse simple compression of data and how content data are separated from presentation (ACTDIK035)
Representation

Representation explores how we model, construct and describe data.

F-2

Recognise patterns

Recognise patterns in data and make generalisations from those patterns.

Students notice patterns in data and make simple generalisations (e.g. organise objects by colour or size) and predictions (e.g. how the pattern continues).

Represent data using symbols

Express data (including ideas, objects, actions) using pictures and symbols.

Students use a picture or symbol to represent an idea, but know the picture is not the data itself (e.g. the Australian Aboriginal flag represents the people, the land, and the sun).

3-4

Different representations

The same data is represented differently depending on its purpose.

Students explain how the same data can be represented in different ways (e.g. five vs 5 vs V vs |||| vs cinque) and why some are better than others in certain contexts (e.g. 5 is the best representation for calculation).

5-6

Whole number representation

All data can be represented as whole numbers in digital systems.

Students represent data using whole numbers (e.g. converting letters in a message to numbers using their position in the alphabet) and recognise this is how digital systems represent data.

7-8

Binary

Using only two symbols (e.g. 0 and 1 in base-2) to represent a whole number.

Students represent whole numbers in binary, and recognise this is how digital systems represent whole numbers (e.g. converting a character to its Unicode value, then converting that value into binary).

9-10

Compression

Data can be compressed by removing redundancy without loss of information.

Students use an algorithm to identify patterns in data (e.g. repeated pixels in an image) and represent them in a compressed way (e.g. run-length encoding).
Data types

Data types describe the internal representation of data in digital systems and the operations that can be performed on it.

F-2

The content descriptions do not explicitly address Data types in band F-2.

3-4

Data types

Data can be represented in many ways.

Students describe different types of data (e.g. numbers, letters, pictures) and how they can be used.

5-6

Data types

Data types define how data is represented and the operations that can change it.

Students explain how the data type used to represent data (e.g. number, string) changes the operations you can perform on it (e.g. adding numbers performs addition, adding strings joins them).

7-8

Data types

Data types define how data is represented and the operations that can change it.

Students explain the conventions used by digital systems to represent data as whole numbers.

Text strings are represented as a sequence of individual characters (e.g. letters, punctuation and emoji) using the Unicode character set.

Bitmap images (e.g. PNG and JPEG) store the colour of each pixel as separate red, green and blue (RGB) channels ranging from 0-255. Vector graphics (e.g. SVG) represent images using the geometry of lines and shapes.

Audio is represented using whole numbers for the amplitude (e.g. -32,768 to 32,767 for 16-bit audio) at a given sampling rate (e.g. 44,100 Hz).

9-10

Document representation

A document can be described by its content and how it is presented.

Students represent documents by separating content and presentation (e.g. HTML and CSS) and explain why this separation is important.