Computing – Page 111 – Computing & Digital Blog

Computer Games learning materials

November 16, 2010 - Bobby - 2

Hilary and me met with Graeme Clark, of SQA’s E-Assessment & Learning team, this morning to discuss support materials for the new NPAs in Computer Games. We will be developing teaching and learning material for the entire suite of awards (at Levels 4, 5 and 6) in electronic format, suitable for delivery on a wide variety of platforms (such as stand-alone PCs or VLEs). Stevenson College will carry out this work, on SQA’s behalf. The material will be available by…

Sector Panel meeting

November 12, 2010 - Bobby - 1

The Sector Panel for Computing & IT met today at The Park Hotel in Glasgow. Fourteen people attended. The purpose of the Sector Panel is to provide SQA with guidance about what is happening externally and what we need to do to ensure our awards are relevant and up-to-date. Today we discussed the on-going HN review, Genny Dixon of E-Skills UK updated us on national developments, Chris Jones raised a variety of issues coming from the Scottish Computing Alliance, and…

Reid Kerr prize giving ceremony

November 12, 2010 - Bobby - 0

I was asked to present the SQA prize at the Reid Kerr prize giving ceremony, held at Paisley Abbey yesterday afternoon. It is a fantastic venue for an event like this. Jean Hubert Kasubandi won the SQA prize, having overcome tremendous problems to acheive his HND. These events are great. It’s fantastic to see the pride on the faces of students and their families. I had a great time. The college did a great job in organising the ceremony, which…

Visiting centres

November 11, 2010 - Bobby - 1

The demands of my job make it difficult to get out and actually visit centres to talk to teachers and students but at the end of last week I managed to visit two colleges that I have previously taught in. On Thursday afternoon I visited Clydebank College, at the invitation of Graeme Downey, and met several of my ex-colleagues. Graeme, kindly, gave me the chance to talk to students and I had a discussion with a group of NC students…

Qualifications Support Team

November 3, 2010 - Bobby - 0

Over the past few years, we have established the HN Qualification Support Team (QST) for Computing which offers ongoing support and advice to allow for improvements and to exemplify national standards for our HNC/D & PDA portfolio of awards. We are in the process of reviewing our membership of the group and in order to ensure full coverage of all areas, we seek some new volunteers (particularly those with experience in delivering Computer Games and Vendor Curriculum linked with SQA units). The QST physically…

Heads of Computing Event

October 29, 2010 - Bobby - 0

Just a reminder to say we have limited places available at the Heads of Computing Event on Friday 3rd December 2010 in Edinburgh. If you are intending on coming along, please register soon here.

CISCO units

October 29, 2010 - Bobby - 0

A writing team responsible for producing the updated HN units that link to the new CISCO curriculum met this morning to take forward this work. We hope to produce new units by the end of March next year. These units will fully incorporate the CISCO Explorer and Discoverer curriculum. Representatives of City of Glasgow, Motherwell, Angus, Cardonald, and Stow colleges attended. A key part of the training was to try to produce very generic units that are fully compatible with…

Qualification Support Team for NC Computing

October 28, 2010 - Bobby - 2

The Qualification Support Team (QST) responsible for supporting non-advanced awards met this afternoon in the SQA offices in Glasgow. Representatives of various colleges attended to discuss ways in which SQA can support non-advanced awards such as the National Certificate in Digital Media Computing and the various NPAs that exist at SCQF Levels 4, 5 and 6, such as PC Passport. The main purpose of each QST meeting is to discuss the suggestions for improvement or support that we receive from…

Engage for education

October 26, 2010 - Bobby - 0

The Scottish Government set up the Engage for Education website to stimulate discussion about education in Scotland. The associated blog has posts from various individuals about their daily work in education. I was recently invited to contribute to the blog about the new NPAs in Computer Games Development. You can see my post here.

Follow us on Twitter

October 26, 2010 - Bobby - 2

The Computing team started to use Twitter around a year ago and, since then, there has been slow but steady growth in the number of people who follow us. We presently have 155 followers. But it would be better if that was 500. We use Twitter for messages that we would not normally post on the blog (such as to let you know when one of us is on leave – good to know if you are waiting for a…