Future-Ready Thinkers

Overview

Subject Area: Cross-Curriculum Priority – General Capabilities
Curriculum Focus: Critical and Creative Thinking; Ethical Understanding; Personal and Social Capability
Australian Curriculum Level: Year 11 (Senior Secondary) – Aligned with the Australian Curriculum: General Capabilities and the ACT Senior Secondary Curriculum Framework.
Lesson Duration: 180 minutes
Class Size: 15 students

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Lesson Focus

Theme: Innovation — Understanding and Designing for Future Challenges
Big Idea: Students develop powerful ideas and prototypes that use innovation to solve real-world Australian and global problems.
Driving Question: How might we use innovation today to shape a sustainable, ethical, and socially responsible Australia tomorrow?

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Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

• Analyse the concept of innovation from ethical, social, and technological perspectives.
• Apply design thinking to a real-world Australian context to create innovative solutions.
• Collaborate to produce a prototype addressing a future-focused problem using creative and critical thinking.
• Reflect critically on the role of innovation in Australia’s cultural and socio-economic landscape.

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General Capabilities Focus

Capability	Description
Critical and Creative Thinking	Encouraging ideation, divergent thinking, and solution-based processes.
Ethical Understanding	Understanding ethical implications of innovation on society and future generations.
Personal and Social Capability	Collaborating, empathising with end users, and respecting diverse perspectives.

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Materials Required

• Butcher’s paper, whiteboards, Post-it notes
• Laptop/tablet per group
• Access to prototyping materials (cardboard, recyclables, LEGO, electronics)
• Creative software (e.g., Canva, Tinkercad, Scratch, Slides)
• A "mystery box" with tactile inspiration items (random household objects)

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Lesson Structure — 180 Minutes

Part 1: Ignite (0–30 mins)

Activity: ‘2100 Snapshots’ Futures Video + Debrief

• Teacher presents a fictional documentary from the year 2100 created using AI visuals and audio (prepared beforehand or generated using AI tools like Synthesia or D-ID).
• The documentary includes major socio-tech events: mass climate migration, ethical dilemmas over AI justice systems, renewable cities in the Outback, etc.
• Students watch and write down surprise elements, ethical questions, and things they find exciting or scary.

Class Discussion:

• What seemed possible vs implausible?
• Could Australia lead in any of those innovations?
• How did the video make you feel about the future?

🎯 Purpose: Sets a provocative tone, encourages empathy and systems thinking, and triggers deep questions.

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Part 2: Explore & Empathise (30–60 mins)

Activity: Future Needs Mapping – Australia 2050

• Working in groups, students are given one key area (e.g. agriculture, Indigenous knowledge, mental health, sea-level rise, AI & work, sustainable cities).
• Each group researches current trends using curated offline resources or AI-generated newspaper reports from 2050 (written in advance by the teacher or generated).
• They fill in a "Future Canvas":
  • Who will be affected?
  • What will be scarce/valuable?
  • What values may be in tension?
  • Who might be forgotten?

🎯 Purpose: Develops empathy and context. Creates understanding grounded in Australian geography, diversity, and Indigenous perspectives.

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Part 3: Ideate & Innovate (60–110 mins)

Activity: Lightning Prototyping Labs

Students select one problem area and engage in a fast-paced innovation sprint using a hybrid Design Thinking + Systems Thinking framework:

Phases:

1. Define the user – Build a persona (rural teen, Torres Strait Islander elder, etc.)
2. What if...? – Each student generates 5 “What if we could…” ideas. Push for wild, world-changing, and disruptive.
3. Mash-up ideation – Combine ideas randomly or with AI-generated suggestions.
4. Prototype with limited time & tools (physical, digital, or performative)

💡 Twist: Halfway through the prototyping, introduce an “ethics card” that changes the challenge. E.g. “You must now make your solution accessible to remote Indigenous communities with no reliable internet.”

🎯 Purpose: Encourages innovative, Australian-specific, ethically-sound solutions under real-world constraints.

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Part 4: Showcase & Reflect (110–160 mins)

Activity: Innovation Showcase Gallery Walk

• Students prepare a 3-minute pitch and set up their prototypes.
• Others circulate, ask questions as futuristic stakeholders (teacher assigns student roles: CEO, refugee advocate, high schooler of 2070, robotics engineer).
• Students receive feedback cards: “Most likely to succeed,” “Most ethical innovation,” “Most unexpected solution.”

🎯 Purpose: Practises pitch skills, listening, peer feedback, and reframing ideas.

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Part 5: Reflect & Extend (160–180 mins)

Activity: AI Facilitated Self-Reflection

• Students have a dialogue with an AI chatbot (e.g. ChatGPT) in which they explain their project and reflect on what worked and what didn’t.
• Prompts include:
  • “How innovative do you think this solution is compared to real-world examples today?”
  • “What did this experience teach you about your responsibility as an innovator?”
  • “Which General Capabilities did I use, and how might they help me in my personal goals?”
• Students write a 150-word reflection or record a 1-minute video summary.

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Assessment

Criteria	Description	Weighting
Collaboration	Demonstrates cooperative teamwork and contributes constructively	20%
Innovation Quality	Originality, creativity and real-world relevance of the prototype	30%
Ethical Consideration	Thoughtfulness toward social, cultural, and environmental impact	20%
Communication	Clarity and persuasion of the final presentation	15%
Reflection Depth	Insightfulness in evaluating personal growth and implications	15%

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Extension Opportunities

• Submit prototypes to a real-world youth innovation challenge (e.g. ABC’s Heywire, the Australian STEM Video Game Challenge, or the Eureka Prize).
• Schedule a virtual Q&A with an Australian entrepreneur or CSIRO futurist.
• Invite Year 9/10 students for peer-led design thinking workshops.

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Teacher’s Notes

• Consider session pacing – if students are highly engaged, be flexible with prototyping time.
• For lower-resource schools, allow alternatives like storyboards, paper models, etc.
• Encourage emotional intelligence — discussion of anxiety about the future is valid and valuable.
• Incorporate Indigenous perspectives intentionally — invite guest speakers where possible, include Country-specific challenges.

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Conclusion

The innovation focus in this unit isn’t about shiny gadgets — it’s about reshaping how students think, act, feel, and take responsibility for complex futures. It promotes bold thinking under pressure, empathy in design, and incorporates ethical edges into problem-solving — the hallmarks of 21st-century learning through an Australian lens.