Today and tomorrow, I am attending the Game to Learn Conference organised by Jisc. In fact, it’s a three day conference, but yesterday’s event was for “code-bashers”. The agenda for today and tomorrow is more accessible to the non-programmer. Today’s event is being held at Dundee College. SQA is directly involved in two workshops – one relating to our Gamespace project and one related to the NPAs in Computer Games Development. Colin Maxwell, of Carnegie College, is leading a workshop…
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Late last year I provided an update on the new PDA in Web Design award to let you know the timescales in which we planned to have this made available to centres. There has been a delay in the development of the award, however we are now finalising each of the units and putting the finishing touches to the validation document. The award will consist of three single credits at SCQF Level 7. The Units will be: 1. Website Design: Planning…
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I posted a message in December about a project being undertaken to look at ways of measuring performance in vocational Computing programmes. The project was requested by the Sector Panel for Computing & IT, and is being undertaken by Ron Dillon (Stow College) and Joanna McGilvray (Forth Valley College). I met with Ron and Joanna this afternoon to get an update on their progress. The aim of the project is to look at ways of measuring success within vocational Computing awards.…
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The Sector Skills Council for Computing (E-Skills UK) and the awarding bodies across the UK meet every few months to discuss national issues at Awarding Body Forum meetings. I attended a meeting today at the Edexcel offices in London. The agenda always covers a wide range of issues. Today’s event included an interesting presentation from Mark Elkins from the BBC about their plans to revamp their long-running, and highly successful, Webwise initiative. The updated version should be available from May…
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I was invited to give a presentation at the Internet Safety & Responsible Use Conference organised by LTS. The conference was opened by the Minister for Children and Early Years, Adam Ingram. My own presentation was about national qualifications in this area, specifically: Internet Safety (unit) Child Online Protection & Safeguarding of Children (PDA) Internet safety conference View more presentations from bobbyelliott I was pleased at the interest in my talk and, hopefully, many people will take it forward by…
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Readers of this blog will know that there is a separate blog for the current review of a number of HN frameworks. There is a side-panel (see right) on this blog that imports a feed from the review blog so that you can see the latest posts. I use a separate blog for important developments, rather than include lots of messages in this blog since I appreciate that some readers may not be interested in the development. For example, there…
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February 28, 2011 - Bobby -
I posted recently about how colleges can develop their own qualifications. Many centres have “devolved responsibility” and can validate their own awards. Alternatively, centres can ask SQA to lead the development. If colleges go down the latter route, SQA’s Business Case Group (BCG) scrutinises their proposal and decides if the idea is viable. I attended a BCG meeting this morning because a college had proposad a new HNC qualification in my area. There was a positive outcome, which will be…
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February 24, 2011 - Bobby -
If you are considering offering SQA’s new National Progression Awards in Computer Games Development (available at SCQF levels 4, 5 and 6) you may be interested in attending the Game to Learn: Take 2! conference at Dundee College on 18 March. The NPA covers the design, creation of graphics, sounds and animation and development of computer games. Colin Maxwell from Carnegie College will lead a workshop on how to create a 3D game using Blender, the free 3D modelling and…
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February 24, 2011 - Bobby -
We are in the process of finalising three new HN Units on Configuring, Troubleshooting and Managing Desktop Operating Systems which are listed below. The Units were written with Windows 7 in mind, however, the Outcomes in each of the Units have been written in a vendor-independent manner. There is no restriction placed on the operating system to be used and centres are free to choose any operating system of their choice. Configuring a Desktop Operating System (2 Credits at SCQF Level…
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February 23, 2011 - Bobby -
I receive many phone calls and e-mails from centres looking to find out which exemplar materials have been produced (or in the process of being produced) for a variety of units within our Group Awards. We have a dedicated team within SQA who project manage the production and publishing of all Support Materials for units within NPA/NC/HN/PDA awards across all qualification areas. This team maintain tracking spreadsheets of all support materials and these are published on the SQA website and updated on a…
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