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Tech tutoring
from idea to working build.

sense, decide, move: the smallest program in the subject

From the Years 7 to 10 groundwork to SACE Stage 2 Digital Technologies. Small groups, and sessions built on what your kid’s school is assessing this term.

Talk to a teacher Find your starting point

01 / WHAT WE COVER

Technologies, at StudyNote.

Technologies is where school stops being answers on paper: students design something, build or code it, and are marked on how they got there. On a timetable that is two subjects, Digital Technologies on the code side and Design and Technologies on the workshop side. Robotics sits on the seam.

Digital Technologies is the one most tutoring companies quietly do not offer, because staffing it needs someone who teaches it rather than someone who once coded. It is taught here by a teacher who teaches it in a South Australian school.

02 / YEARS 7 TO 10

One area, two subjects.

South Australia has built its own curriculum for public schools, adapted from the Australian Curriculum, Version 9, with a phased rollout the department expects to complete in 2027. In it, Technologies is a single learning area holding the two subjects a student meets as separate classes: Digital Technologies, and Design and Technologies.

Two things hold steady through the change: the content runs in two-year bands, Years 7 and 8 together and Years 9 and 10 together, and the topics carry the same national codes under either framework. Schools still sit at different points in the move, so we ask what your kid covered in class this week and work from that.

Bring the subject name and this week’s topic off their timetable and we will map it to whichever version your kid’s school is on.

SA Curriculum: Technologies

Essential Learning

Dispositions Empathetic · Curious · Creative · Resilient
Capabilities Thinking and innovation · Producing and implementing · Ethical practices · Local and global citizenship · Collaboration and management
Knowledge People and systems · Data and information · Thinking and making · Interactions and impacts

Learning Standards What the three elements look like, together, at each band.

03 / BAND BY BAND

Find your technologies
starting point.

Pick their band. The SA Curriculum runs Technologies in two-year blocks, so Year 7 and Year 8 share one list. This is what each subject covers, and sessions begin at whichever line of it never quite landed.

Two subjects Real code arrives on the digital side. The full design cycle arrives on the other.

Digital Technologies

People and systems
How hardware, software and networks fit together. How data crosses a network safely, and why everything a computer holds ends up as binary.
Data and information
Spreadsheets and databases: collecting data worth trusting, structuring and querying it, charting it to show the trend.
Thinking and making
The step up from block coding: algorithms with flowcharts and pseudocode, then writing, tracing and debugging text-based programs with functions.
Interactions and impacts
Whether a solution actually serves its users. Multi-factor authentication, phishing and the digital footprint they are already leaving.

Design and Technologies

People and systems
Force, motion and energy driving engineered systems. How food and fibre are produced sustainably, and what a material’s properties let you cut, shape, join and combine.
Thinking and making
The full design cycle: analyse a need, draw the idea to scale on paper or as a digital model, prototype it, test it, then make it safely.
Interactions and impacts
Design criteria written as a team, sustainability included. Weighing what an innovation changes for the people who live with it.

Design thinking The same spine under both subjects this band: a user story that says who it is for, alternatives on paper, a prototype, a test, a better version.

04 / SACE: YEARS 11 AND 12

Two lanes, no exams.

A timetable never says Design, Technology and Engineering. It says Material Solutions, or Robotic and Electronic Systems, or one of two more, and each of those is its own coded enrolment. Here is the actual map, from the SACE Board’s own pages.

Code and data Stage 1 Digital Technologies Stage 2 Digital Technologies
Design and make Stage 1 Design, Technology and Engineering Stage 2, in the same four contexts

Robotics has its own coded lane, the Robotic and Electronic Systems context. If in doubt, ask before subject selection night, not after.

SACE Stage 1 · usually Year 11

The Stage 1 Technologies Subjects One semester or the full year each

Year 11 has two separate technologies subjects and, between them, five ways to enrol, because each Design, Technology and Engineering context is coded on its own. Their grade adds up as they go, not on one exam day. That stays true in Year 12, where neither subject ends in a written exam.

  • Digital Technologies Project skills · Digital solution
  • Design, Technology and Engineering Digital Communication Solutions · Industry and Entrepreneurial Solutions · Material Solutions · Robotic and Electronic Systems

Assessment

Skills tasks and a solution they build, all school assessed
100%
External exam
none

The four Design, Technology and Engineering contexts replaced the old Design and Technology subjects, retired at the end of 2019. Each school decides how much each task counts, so we work to your school’s plan.

SACE Stage 2 · Year 12

Digital Technologies

The folio year. The external 30% is an Individual Digital Solution, built and documented by the student. Coding well and scoring well are not quite the same skill, and we work on whichever half is costing them.

Project skills · Collaborative project · Individual solution

Assessment

Project skills
50%
Collaborative project
20%
Individual digital solution, external
30%

No written exam. The external is submitted online for marking.

SACE Stage 2 · Year 12

Design, Technology and Engineering

One subject in four contexts, each its own coded enrolment. What the class builds decides the code, which is why the timetable rarely shows the subject name.

Digital communication · Industry and entrepreneurial · Material solutions · Robotic and electronic

Assessment

Specialised skills task
20%
Design process and solution
50%
Resource study, submitted externally
30%

We tutor the design side of this: the brief, the design development and working drawings, the documentation, and the Resource Study. Those two components carry 80% of the Stage 2 grade between them. The making itself happens in your school’s workshop, because we do not run one.

Where it leads

Computer science Computer science at Adelaide University lists no subject prerequisite and no assumed knowledge
Information technology The Bachelor of Information Technology at Flinders lists none either, prerequisite or assumed
Software engineering Software engineering at Flinders asks for a Stage 2 maths subject, with Stage 2 Physics assumed on top

No technologies subject is named as a prerequisite by a South Australian computing or engineering degree, and neither earns SATAC adjustment points. The maths lane is the one that gates those courses, so watch that alongside this one. Course pages move, so check the one in mind before subject selection night. We will read its actual entry rules with you.

Not sure which code is on their timetable?

Bring the subject name off the timetable, whether it says Digital Technologies or Material Solutions, and we will tell you which lane it is. We teach the digital lane ourselves. On any Design, Technology and Engineering context we work on the design side, the folio and the Resource Study, and the workshop stays at school.

Ask about a subject

05 / HOW SESSIONS WORK

Find it, fix it, show it moved.

  1. Find the actual gap

    Early sessions put their current project against the band lists above. Is it the code, the documentation, or the design thinking underneath that is stuck?

  2. Rebuild underneath

    If loops never landed, we fix loops before this week’s task. If the design brief is vague, we sharpen the brief before touching the build.

  3. Practise like the assessment

    This area assesses through projects, so practice is scoped project work: build, document, evaluate, the way the marks are actually given.

  4. Show what moved

    Practice notes from each session, and a short progress note before each assessment, so nobody is guessing.

06 / QUESTIONS

About this
subject.

General questions are answered on the main questions page.

My child wants robotics. Where does that actually fit?

Across both subjects, which is what makes it a good test of the area. In Years 7 to 10, Design and Technologies covers the engineered-systems side, force, motion and energy, with CAD models and digital fabrication named at Years 9 and 10, and Digital Technologies covers the programming. Which projects a school actually runs, robots included, is the school’s choice. At SACE, robotics has its own coded lane: the Robotic and Electronic Systems context of Design, Technology and Engineering.

Which programming languages do you cover?

Whatever the school is using. In South Australia that is most often Python, with some schools on JavaScript or C#. Tell us what their class is on and we will work in it rather than teaching a second language on top. The curriculum expects the move from block coding to a text-based language by Years 7 and 8, and object-oriented work by Years 9 and 10.

My child already codes at home. Is this still worth it?

Often yes, and for a reason parents do not expect. Self-taught students frequently lose marks on the documented design process rather than on the code. Being good at programming and doing well at this subject are not quite the same skill, and the gap between them is exactly what tutoring can close.

Is there really no exam?

Really. At Stage 2, Digital Technologies ends in an Individual Digital Solution and Design, Technology and Engineering in a Resource Study: both are the external 30%, both submitted online for marking, neither sat in a hall. Stage 1 is school assessed entirely.

One caution while planning the SACE: neither subject meets the numeracy requirement. That is a mathematics subject’s job.

Can you help with the Stage 2 folio specifically?

Yes, and it is the question we expect most about this subject. The Individual Digital Solution is the student’s own work and has to be. We will not write it, and we will say plainly what is theirs. What we teach is the craft it is marked on: scoping a project, documenting decisions as they are made, testing honestly and evaluating the result.