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The 2004 technology assessments included 13 assessment tasks relating to technological knowledge and understanding.

Ten of the tasks were identical for year 4 and year 8 students and an eleventh had some common components for both year levels plus an additional component for year 8 students. The other two tasks were given only to year 8 students.

Three are trend tasks (fully described with data for both 2000 and 2004), four are released tasks (fully described with data for 2004 only) and six are link tasks (to be used again in 2008, so only partially described here).

The task details and results for the trend tasks are presented in the first section, followed by the task details and results for the released tasks. The third section contains some task information and the results for the link tasks.

Comparing results for year 4 and year 8 students
Averaged across 83 task components completed by both years, 12 percent more year 8 than year 4 students or teams produced correct or strong responses. This indicates that, on average, students have made useful progress between year 4 and year 8 in the skills and understandings assessed by the tasks.

Trend results: Comparing 2000 and 2004 results
Three trend tasks involving a total of 48 components were administered to students in both the 2000 and 2004 assessments.

For year 4 students, there was a small improvement from 2000 to 2004 with, on average, three percent more students succeeding with the task components in 2004. The 2004 students scored higher on 31 components and lower on 15, with no change on two components. For year 8 students there was no meaningful change between 2000 and 2004, with, on average, one percent fewer students succeeding with the task components in 2004. The 2004 students scored higher on 20 components and lower on 26, with no change on two components.