Sustainable Technology

📋 Unit Overview

This unit explores how technology can be designed and used in ways that protect and restore our environment. Students will investigate sustainability challenges, analyse existing technologies, and design their own sustainable solutions.

Ngā Whāinga Akoranga — Learning Intentions

• Understand the environmental impacts of technology (positive and negative)
• Apply life cycle thinking to evaluate products
• Design technological solutions that minimise environmental harm
• Connect sustainability to kaitiakitanga and Indigenous knowledge
• Evaluate technologies using sustainability criteria
• Create prototypes that address real environmental challenges

Paearu Angitu — Success Criteria

• I can evaluate a technology product using life cycle thinking and at least two sustainability criteria
• I can design a prototype that addresses a real environmental challenge and explain my kaitiakitanga reasoning
• I can present my design to an audience and respond to questions about trade-offs

🏛️ The Three Pillars of Sustainability

True sustainability requires balance across all three pillars.

📖 Unit Structure

🗺️ Wāhi Ako | Choose Your Lesson Track

This unit has two complete lesson tracks — both Gold standard, both covering Sustainable Technology for Years 9–10. They are genuinely different: choose the one that fits your class's current focus, or teach them as a complementary sequence.

Using both tracks: Track A provides the design-thinking scaffolding; Track B adds the LCA-kaitiakitanga analytical depth. They can be sequenced (A first, then B for a full 20-lesson unit) or taught in parallel across different class groups as differentiated versions of the same unit.

🎯 Student Project Ideas

📋 Kaiako Planning Snapshot

Entry / On-level / Extension:

• Entry: Focus on Lessons 1–3 only (what is sustainability, technology's footprint, life cycle). Use the three-pillars graphic as a visual scaffold. Pair students for the design challenge.
• On-level: Complete the full 10-lesson sequence. Students select one project idea and develop a prototype with teacher guidance.
• Extension: Design and pitch an original solution to a community sustainability challenge, incorporating Indigenous knowledge and quantitative evidence.

Inclusion Guidance:

• ESOL / ELL learners: Provide visual glossaries for key sustainability terms; allow bilingual project documentation. The kaitiakitanga framing often resonates with students from Pacific and Asian contexts — draw on their environmental knowledge.
• Neurodiverse learners / ADHD: Break the design challenge into daily micro-tasks. Use visual project boards. UDL: accept 3D models, video diaries, or oral presentations as alternatives to written reports.

📋 Curriculum Alignment

NZ Curriculum — Technology

• Technological Practice: Planning, brief development, outcome development
• Nature of Technology: Characteristics of technology, technology and society
• Technological Knowledge: Technological systems, technological products

NZ Curriculum — Science

• Planet Earth and Beyond: Earth systems, sustainability
• Physical World: Energy transformations

Key Competencies: Thinking, Participating and Contributing

Values: Ecological sustainability, Innovation, Integrity