August 19, 2011 - Bobby -
This blog has been around a long time, since 2004 to be precise. It has gradually built-up a pretty good readership, with around 100 visitors each day. The recent survey showed that it was the second most popular communication channel, after the SQA website. There are various ways to follow this blog. You can, of course, simply visit this web page from time to time. You can bookmark the URL (http://sqacomputing.blogspot.com/) and add it to your favourites. But that means that…
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August 17, 2011 - Bobby -
The recent satisfaction survey exposed two criticisms of the service we provide: (1) the way we recruit people to help us; and (2) the way we communicate with centres. I’ll say more about recruiment another day, but I would like to discuss communications today. The specific criticism about communications was that we use too many different ways of communicating with you, such as our website and Blogger and Twitter. A frequent comment was: “Why don’t you put everything in one…
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August 15, 2011 - Bobby -
Many lecturers and teachers return to school and college today to commence academic session 2011/12. Welcome back! We hope you have a good year. If you scroll through this blog, you’ll see what the team has been doing over the summer months. The main development has been the HN Review, which is reviewing five popular Higher National Qualifications. There was a little slippage in assigning unit writers but we are now pushing ahead. Internet Safety has went into a review…
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August 12, 2011 - Bobby -
I wrote in this blog in April that we were would review the Internet Safety qualification at some point in the coming financial year. Well, that review commenced this morning with the first meeting of the Qualification Development Team. The review is being led by Ted Hastings, who created the original award, which has been very well received by thousands of learners in schools and colleges since its introduction in 2006. SQA was the first awarding body in the UK, and…
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The following changes have been made to HN materials over the summer break so please make sure that you have downloaded the most up-to-date versions before delivery (please refer to the History of Change section within the documents for more information on the reason for change): F1W0 34 Project Management for IT (update to HN Unit Specification)F1VV 34 User Interface Design (update to HN Unit Specification)F1VY 34 Manage Database Systems (update to HN Unit Specification and HN Exemplar) There have…
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I came across 85 Resources: Educator Guide for Integrating Social Media today, which looks like an excellent resource for teachers who want to use social media. The site includes lots of useful links and resources for teachers.
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I attended one of SQA’s occasional research seminars yesterday afternoon. This one was about learners’ use of IT. The research was carried out (by SQA) between April and May 2011, and focussed on school pupils and college students in Scotland. The main points I noted were: 9 in 10 used their own technology for learning just over half felt “very comfortable” using technology for learning 2 in 3 used technology for assessment purposes 3 in 4 used some sort of…
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Please find below link to a survey on proposals to replace the current SVQ IT Practitioner and Professional qualifications which form part of Modern Apprenticeships in Scotland. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PJTR5KY Your feedback is much appreciated.
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Our meeting with Colin and Gerry from Scotland’s Colleges last Thursday was part of the team’s “AGM”. Once per year we try to find a day to get away from our e-mails and telephones to discuss more strategic issues. Our relationship with Scotland’s Colleges is clearly one such issue, but we also discussed other things. We reviewed the membership of committees. We run three committees: the Sector Panel for Computing & IT; and the Qualifications Support Teams for NC/NPA and…
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Me, Caroline and Hilary met with the corresponding team from Scotland’s Colleges this morning. Colin and Gerry came through to the SQA offices in Glasgow. The purpose of the meeting was to update each other on our respective plans, and explore ways of working together. It was a productive meeting, with lots of good ideas coming out of it. One of the things we discussed was teaching and learning materials for the new HNs that will be produced as part of…
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