What is the Secondary Level Challenge?

Secondary Level (Years 11-13)

The Senior Secondary level of Tahi Rua Toru Tech is where the innovation builds! Students are tasked with identifying a problem in their school or community, and as a team, creating a technology-based solution to solve it!

The program aims to drop students right into the Digital Technologies/Hangarau Matihiko curriculum in an engaging and exciting way that gives them autonomy over their creativity and innovation while also teaching them valuable skills and getting them excited about the prospects of Digital Technologies as a whole.

At this level, the process becomes more comprehensive and more detailed (all layed out below) and can also be used for the assessment of NCEA credits and other projects at these levels.

Check out our FAQ section for common questions you may have, or contact us at kiaora@123tech.nz to chat to a member of our team!

And It’s All Planned Out For You!

We know teachers already have enough on their plates! That’s why we have mapped out the entire program for you!

The program comes with fully translated resources such as process documentation, project plan, report templates, and information sheets which can be found below. Also, with the help of our 123-tech team and industry mentors, you can easily integrate the challenge into your lesson plans.

Below you will find a week-by-week breakdown of how the program works, as well as all the resources and templates to do so! We also have a handy teacher’s guide which dives deeper into the background of the challenge and the planned outcomes!

    • Start your project blog.

    • Allocate key tasks to team members – check out the X02 Working as a Team document.

    • Familiarise yourselves with the program brief.

    • Produce a list of ideas.

    • Identify and collect as much information as you can find that is relevant to the program.

    • Do background research – check out the X03 Background doc.

    • Remember to put all your research notes, diagrams, and information onto your blog!

    • Plan for ethical practice: X04 Ethical Practice

    • Decide what your solution will be, what it will do, what your key point of difference or stand-out features will be and why, and how you think you might create it.

    • Sketch out the detail of how your solution will look and feel, start thinking about colours and usability.

    • Using what you have learned from your research and the requirements of the program, list out your findings and key ideas that you want to incorporate in your solution.

    • Give the project proposal form to your teacher for their review and sign-off.

    • Produce a list of design requirements from your research, relevant to the brief.

    • Generate a range of different possible solutions.

    • You might also like to think about who is in your team and what their strengths are, and who could be doing which tasks.

    • Use X07 Progress Check to do a progress check.

    • Begin developing your solution.

    • You may need to change your plans or even redefine your aims, needs, or opportunity as you go, because things often don’t work out as you expect them to – especially after research. This is called a ‘pivot’ and is good!

    • You may need to use creativity and perseverance to cope with problems that arise.

    • Note all changes and the reasons for them on your team blog.

    • User testing is important for finding bugs you overlooked – see what issues or improvements you and your friends/testers can come up with.

    • Collate and analyse your results, using the X08 Collate and Analyse your results document

    • Modify and Improve your solution where necessary.

    • Check you are still meeting the project requirements by reviewing the document.

    • Your report, along with your blog, will be used to determine if you have achieved a Senior Secondary 123Tech Certificate.

    • Complete your report and upload it on the 123Tech website (where you update your blog).