Digital technologies

Digital systems

Hold up a mobile telephone and ask students what they know about this digital system

Explain that it is a digital system because it has electrical parts inside that work together and it also
talks to other devices. This series of lessons is all about systems.

If we wanted to send a message to someone who lived far away, how do we do it? How did people
do this before phones?

- Brainstorm a list of ways we communicated before smartphones.

- Discuss the ‘solutions’ or ways of communicating that the students identify, for example, the
rotary phone, Morse code or homing pigeons.
- The problems associated with each way of communicating
- Changes that led to improvements in communication.

Mail by post – while it took a long time, it improved with the development of transport. Ships, horse
and carriage, steam engines, trucks and planes all delivered mail.

Homing pigeon – only has one receiving point so can only work when the sender is holding the
receiver’s pigeon. Birds can be vulnerable to predators along the way. Useful in war time to deliver
important messages.

Communication timeline

>40000 BC Message sticks Aboriginal people sent messages across language

groups and vast stances by carving symbols into
message sticks and sending them to a messenger
>1000 BC Postal services Under the chou dynasty it was probably in china that
a posthouse system was first developed and was
brought to a high state of development under the
mongo emperors
776 BCE Carrier pigeons Carrier pigeons took messages tied to their feet. It is
believed that the outcomes of the Olympic games in
Ancient Greece around 766bce were sent to Athens
by pigeons
105 Paper Cai lun is traditionally regarded as the inventor of the
paper making process. He was Chinese. China has
used paper for centuries
1440 Printing press Joseph Gutenberg invented the printing press. The
printing press allowed lots of copies of texts to be
printed at once. People who could read got their
information this way. The printing press encouraged
people to learn and read
1512 British postal service Britain established a postal service using horse and
carriage to transport mail
 1809 Australia postal service In 1809 Australia established a postal service to
transport letters by sea and land
1830-1875 Telegraph Used to tap out messages in Morse code
Telephone Alexander graham bell patented the telephone
1983 Mobile phone First commercially available wireless mobile phone
2007-2010 Smartphone First smartphone was created in 1992 by IBM
1982-now Internet Internet and world wide web communications were
developed

• Identify and focus on similarities and differences

• Compare what is included in the resource to their own timeline and vice versa
• Check how close their estimates of dates were
• Discuss the items that we not included on their timeline but were on the poster.

Using questions, guide students to verbalise their observations

• How have people solved the problem of getting messages across long distances?
• What were the limitations of earlier message sending?
• What was the quickest way to get a message before phones? Why?
• What was the most reliable way to get a message before phones? Why? Refer to these ways
of communicating as a ‘system’. A system can be a way of getting information in, sorting and
processing it and then sending it out.

What is a system

• A system is a group of related parts that work together, often in a cycle.

• If you understand how a process works from start to finish then you are able to use systems
thinking.
• Understanding ‘digital systems’ is about knowing how the component parts, both inside and
outside of our devices, work together to solve problems and perform tasks. This includes
understanding the data codes that computers use to process information.

We make sense of the world by grouping into systems

- solar system
- Ecosystem
- Mailing system

- Components of a system interact

with other parts of the system.
- Changing one part of the system
or adding a new component has
an impact.
 Digital systems include
Hardware (computer systems)
Software
Peripherals (headphones, game controllers, webcams)

Hardware
Ask students to brainstorm hardware, then reveal the items in the PowerPoint.
Hardware includes:
• The physical components of a computer or digital system
• The parts you can touch and see on the outside
• The mechanical parts you would see if you opened up a system and looked inside including:
The circuits that use electricity to send information around the system
The parts that store images, sound and text in the computer’s memory like the central processing
unit, random access memory and the hard disk drive.
Smartphone or tablet
Mouse
Laptop
Keyboard
Monitor
Tower

Software
• A set of instructions that tells the computer or digital system what to do
• System software – programs like the operating systems that help store and run other
software programs
• Applications like those that help you write documents, draw, make presentations or movies.
You cannot see software because it is a set of instructions written using programming
languages like python, html or c#.

Peripherals
• Devices you can add or connect to a computer or digital system
• Devices that help manage the inputs – for example, voice through a microphone, images
through the camera
• Devices that help manage the outputs, like documents through a printer, sound through
earphones or speakers, and images through a projector.
• Sensors that detect both inputs and outputs, like a touch sensor to input onto a screen, or
an accelerometer that measures movement, or a gyroscope that shows direction.

Digital systems begin with an input which is stored and then processed to an become an output.

Input  store  process  output

How computers work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkgzlaplvly

Ask students what has been the most important invention to support communication across time
and distance?

- Draw and explain

 Message sticks underground protocols

Remind students of the timelines they developed and the resource on the history of communication
systems. Talk about how messages were sent and received in different systems before phones.

Surface the ways message sending can be unreliable.

- Pass the action game

- Chinese whispers

Students stand in a line facing away from each other. The leader taps the first student on the
shoulder, and they turn to face the leader. The leader demonstrates a set of 4 movements and the
first student then passes it on to the next student. The last person compares the movement
sequence they received with the original sent by the leader. This exercise is to support students to
understand that data (movement in this case) is transmitted from one system (in this case a person
but could be a cell in a network) to another. Without adequate protocols the message is lost from
one person to another. There is a specific set of processes that allow us to get the right message. If
the message is not transferred exactly, the final person will get the wrong message. Discuss with
students why the movement did or did not change. Ask students to notice how the messages are
miscommunicated. Ask students to notice how they remembered the movements – did they break
them down into chunks? Was there loss of some movements or did the movement get clearly
presented. What happened along the way for this outcome to occur? If the message was correctly
transferred ask why this happened? What happened so that the message was sent reliably?

In computer science we would recognise that digital systems work similarly to this game. They break
down information into parts (in this case a group of movements) and then reassemble them at the
end. Sometimes information gets lost along the way. It is important that messages are delivered
reliably across the internet. How are messages received reliably and not lost along the way? This
requires an internet protocol (ip) address. Message sticks are like a traditional example of this
protocol.
 Message sticks

How do message sticks work? Building on from the pass the action game, this activity is designed to
illuminate the need for strict protocols. Message sticks were a protocol used by aboriginal people to
cross into country owned by different language groups. These sticks would act like a passport,
allowing the messenger to cross safely. The symbols on the sticks were a sophisticated system of
communication that did not require the messenger to know the language group they were visiting.
As with aboriginal systems of communication and welcome, computers also use systems to send and
deliver messages safely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdyxxlogp4c

• Why were message sticks important?

• How might people communicate across different language groups now?
• What role might the symbols play on the message sticks?
• What do you think might interrupt the safe delivery of a message stick?
• What can we learn from message sticks?
• What is similar and different about sending messages digitally and using a message stick?
• What problem

As part of the discussion of the video, ensure the term protocol is fully understood and that message
sticks are a protocol established for communication

What do you think the ‘rules’ for delivering and receiving messages could be? How could you:

• Ensure the same message is reached at the other end

• Ensure the messenger remains safe
• Ensure the whole message gets there
• Indicate you’ve received the message.

These rules could be referred to as protocols

Excursion to SA museum to look at message stick artefacts.

 Applications

In computer science, protocols are similar to message sticks. They are a set of rules or procedures
for sending data between devices like computers, tablets or smartphones. For digital systems to
send and receive information there must be an agreement as to how the information will be
organised. Students may have noticed abbreviations when using digital systems such as:

• Ip – internet protocol – usually accompanies a numbered address

• Tcp – transmission control protocol – allows communication across vast distances
• Http – hypertext transfer protocol – used for sending and receiving files on the world wide
web
• Smtp – simple mail transfer protocol – supports email

Students don’t need to know all of these but can focus on internet protocol. Every computer or
digital system on a network has an internet protocol address. This is usually a string of 4 numbers
separated by dots into 4 sections. This address is the way that digital systems know which device
messages have come from and where to send them. The 4 sets of numbers identify the host
computer and the network to which it belongs.
 Pop stick messenger – data packets.

https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/code-org/computers-and-the-internet/internet-
works/v/the-internet-packet-routers-and-reliability

1:56 – how does a song get from a music streaming app to your phone? Reinforce that the song
doesn’t come directly from the music streaming service to your phone. It can go through a series of
different paths. The paths are the network. Servers are digital systems that deliver data from one
computer to another on a network.

3:21 – what is a packet of data? Reinforce that sounds (like songs on a music streaming app) or
images are both considered information that can be broken down into data packets. Large amounts
of data need to be broken up into ‘packets’ to get to the right spot, just like the way the action was
broken down on the popstick into smaller parts in the popstick activity. To get to the right spot the in
the right order the sender had to use numbers. The messengers were like the ‘routers’ making sure
they got the message to the receiver.

4:03 to 4:44 – this section deals with tcp. If you think your students can deal with the extra
complexity, show them up to this point as well. After viewing the video draw comparisons between
the popstick activity and the way that data is transmitted across networks. Students in year 5 are not
expected to fully understand everything explained in the video resource and this process may be
repeated in year 6. A key idea here is that protocols include using a sending and receiving ‘address’
so that the message can be delivered correctly, and that data is broken down into more manageable
parts called packets.

Print resource 4

https://www.plink.sa.edu.au/ils/securedata/vudlz4el-
fr32ywctubdjb7usu_pgwi9edr4mcu00gdurvgoamdhu3rtbxnlimt2h0is1da1widzhzbdfv77e0sjumn3c
0dtkxwhzzlprm1adrdb8bfbhhp8zs0-eexvyf-adz5jfsourvlp-kbgxw.pdf
 Understanding networks

How do smartphones talk to each other?

- Step my step on white board how smartphones send message to other smart phones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30wcpnvfike – sorting game

You can use this network with other data sets, like words or names sorted alphabetically. The rule
would be: ‘if you have the word closest to the letter a then take the path to right, otherwise, take
the path to the left.’

It is a good chance to emphasise:

• paired data (a binary process)

• ‘if this, then that’ conditional statements

• why digital systems are good at sorting data – it may seem like a long process to use but digital
systems do it at incredible speeds. The more nodes the more sets of data that can be paired at once.
This is why systems contain huge networks of computers.

• the language used to describe the way the data is moving through the network – input, store,
process, output

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wtkb5n-aom

Key facts to emphasise:

• a smartphone is a digital system.

• systems work by receiving inputs and sending outputs.

• when systems are connected together, they form a network.

• all digital systems are made up of hardware and software components.

• digital systems use a process of input → store → process → output to deliver information to the
user.

• parts of a device can perform one or more of these functions.

Revisit

• systems thinking • digital systems • hardware, software and peripherals • inputs and outputs
 Understanding component parts

‘are smartphones really smart?’

- Explore comparisons between humans and phones. What makes us smart? We can become
smarter by learning and practicing. Intelligence is not fixed.
- Can smartphones learn? Explain that students are going to find out if smartphones are really
smart by thinking like computer scientists and ‘dissecting’ them

Draw what you think the inside of a smartphone looks like

- Brainstorm parts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkuirewezvm

Discuss the children’s responses to the rotary phone. Discuss the similarities and differences
between new and old phones, for example:

• We still need numbers to make a call

• There is still a speaker for the ear and a mouthpiece or input microphone
• Both make a sound to notify the user there is an incoming call.

These observations are important to draw attention to, so that you can begin referring to inputs and
outputs

Some problems they may identify with old phones may be:

• You have to remember the numbers

• You can’t see the other person
• The phone only does one thing
• You can’t play games or text

https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/how-many-parts-dina-a-amins-gadget-guessing-game-videos

- Guess how many parts each thing has

Discuss some of the problems associated with new smartphones. Some problems with new devices
may be:

• data privacy
• cyber security and safety issues
• sustainability – disposal of phones and the metals within them causing pollution
• consumerism – always wanting the new phone
• losing connectivity in rural and remote areas.
Are smartphones really smart?

• Smartphones are a compact digital system.

• This means they have hardware and software.
• Peripheral devices can be attached to them.
• A smartphone has a central processing unit (CPU) that acts like the brain. 
• A smartphone has sensors that allow it to count our steps, or tell us which way to go on a
map. This is why they are sometimes referred to as ‘smart’.
• A smartphone can play music to our earphones.
• A smartphone can send and receive messages via text, voice or video calls.
• But how?

Under the screen

• What is going on under the screen of a tablet or phone?

• What are the parts?
• Which of the parts are input or output?
• Which parts store information?
• Which parts process the information?
• What software do they have?
• How do they communicate with each other?
• How do they know how many steps we have taken?

System on a chip (SoC)

System on a chip (SoC) is a small circuit board inside the phone which may contain some of these
important component parts:

• A Central Processing Unit (CPU): The CPU acts like the brain of the system. It processes
inputs and outputs.
• The CPU takes instructions from the memory and runs those instructions using the software
on the system.
• The memory stores information.
What is RAM?
o Random Access Memory (RAM) is different from the memory used to store pictures
and texts.
o RAM stores information temporarily so it can be quickly accessed. It does not hold
onto the files.
Long-term storage
o This is the long-term memory where files are stored and can be retrieved. These file
remains.
• A Graphics Processing Unit (GPU): The GPU creates the images we see from pixels.
• Sensors are small devices that detect things like movement, heat, light, moisture and sound.
o Accelerometer – senses backwards and forwards movement. This helps to count
your steps.
o Gyroscope – senses which way is up. So, when you turn your phone around it will
alter the screen for you.
o Light sensor – senses whether you are in a bright, light-filled place or when you are
in the dark, and will adjust the screen to the ambient light.
 o Magnetometer or digital compass – senses which way is north. It helps with
directions, especially when using maps.

Other important parts

Power source

- The battery produces electricity.

- The battery allows an electric current to move through the phone’s circuits.
- The battery powers all the component parts.
- All of this takes a lot of energy, so the battery needs to be plugged into a main power source
to recharge

Screen

- Tiny pixels
- More pixels the better the image

Buttons

- Power button
- Volume buttons

Did you notice that the on off button looks like a 1 and a zero? That is because in binary 1 is on and
zero is off

Ports and cables

- Ports are the connectors between your device and electricity. 

- They provide a conduit to electricity and they also connect our devices to other devices.

Camera

- Most smartphones have a front and rear facing camera.

- There are a lot of tiny parts that make up the lenses and camera component to the phone.
- The light sensor works with the camera to automatically work out the best exposure or how
much light to let in.
 Summative assessment

Part 1 paper mock-up

Ask students to consider current smartphone devices:

• What is good about them?

• What are some of the problems?

Ask students to imagine what they will be like in the future:

• What do you think smartphones be like in 20 or 100 years?

• What will you be able to do with a phone?
• How big will it be and what will it look like?
• What could they do differently?
• Will they always need to connect via a tower in a network?
• What changes would you make if you were in charge?

Design a smartphone of the future on paper. Ask them to imagine they work for a phone company
and they have to sell their ideas to their boss. Make sure students create a labelled diagram of the
inside and outside parts. Ask students to write or verbalise in an explanation how their device is
similar to existing models and how it will be different, in ways that improve the experience for users.
They could decide:

• Who it is for – for example, a design for a child may be different to an adult, or remote areas
may need a stronger connection
• What size it will be
• What component parts it will need
• What special features will be included
• What problems it will solve
• The waste involved in smartphone consumption and the ways in which parts can be recycled
when considering sustainability issues
• How might they future-proof the device, for example addressing data privacy issues