Think of one digital system you used today or this week in Ireland. A Leap card on the bus, a self-checkout in a shop, a weather app before PE, or a machine on a farm. What did you put in, and what came out?
Hands up: which one do you think quietly collects the most data about you?
Technologists sketch a system before they build or fix it. Here are the words they use.
Input: what goes into the system. Process: what the system does with it. Output: what comes out. Data: the facts the system collects or uses along the way.
The phone or machine is not the process. The process is the work it does. Next we will map a real Leap card journey with these words.
We will build an Input → Process → Output map for a Leap card journey. Look at three cards on screen: tap the Leap card, check balance and journey, and gate opens or beep confirms. Call out which column each belongs in.
Now look at the last card: journey time and stop logged. Is that something you hear or see like a beep, or something the system quietly keeps? Where should it go, and why?
Leap card as a digital system
In groups, take one research card: self-checkout, weather app, smart farming, or eFlow toll tag. Read the clues together. Decide the inputs, the process, the outputs, and the data the system uses. Justify each choice from the clues, not from guessing wildly.
On your poster, sketch a clear IPO map, label the data trail, and choose which data matters most. Write one privacy or fairness question your group chose and can explain, matched to the data you said matters most. Be ready for a short share.
This is your technologist's sketch: clear labels beat fancy drawing. Capture enough so you can teach the class how the system works.
On your Investigation Journal page, make a quick labelled IPO sketch of your system (use the poster; do not redraw every decoration). Mark the data trail. Add one sentence on how the system helps people in Ireland, and write the privacy or data question your group chose.
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