August 12, 2008 - Bobby -
I attended a meeting in Edinburgh this morning to discuss the possibility of developing a new HND in the field of computer games. SQA developed a qualification entitled HNC Computer Games Development three years ago and, after a slow start, it is beginning to take off, with several centres reporting a lot of interest and high uptake for the coming session. The attendance this morning seemed to reflect this high interest – 20 people attended (no mean feat given it’s…
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August 11, 2008 - Bobby -
I’m attending the Edinburgh Interactive Festival today, which is being held in the International Conference Centre. It’s been a fascinating day that has helped me understand the computer games industry, which is a £50 billion industry. Of particular interest was trends in the games industry that include growth of gambling and collaborative games, huge increase in online games as the Internet becomes ubiquitous, location-based games that use your current location as an intrinsic part of the game, and new types…
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It’s that time of the year when you start to think about the new term that is about to commence. It’s the same in SQA… we’re thinking about the new session and the demands that will be placed on the team to support and develop our awards. We can only do this with the help of the sector and we’re always looking for people to serve in various roles such as unit writer/vetter, assessment writer and External Verifier. So, if…
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I met with Graeme Clark, of the CAA team, this morning to discuss ESF funding of additional online materials to support Computing awards. SQA recently received significant EU funding to support its awards (at SCQF Levels 4-6) and my team made a number of successful bids for some of this money. Graeme is managing this work, which will produce online assessment material for a number of Units within the new NC Digital Media Computing award, and also online teaching material…
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We have made a slight change to the above HN Unit with the removal of the cutting score of 60% under Evidence Requirements for Outcome 1. Please ensure you download the most up-to-date version from the SQA website. This is now identified as Version 02 (July 08) within the Administrative Information section of the specification.
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The NPA Web Design Fundamentals at SCQF Level 5 was created to match the requirements of the vendor curriculum, Digital Design: Foundations of Web Design from Adobe (formally Macromedia). This curriculum provides resources and learning materials which may be used in the delivery of the NPA Unit F181 11 Web Design Fundamentals. Materials have been donated to support this qualification from Adobe as part of the SQA’s DIVA project. CD-ROM copies of the master set of materials for your centre…
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Last month I posted a blog entry inviting you to attend the IBM Teach the Teachers training event which is taking place from Monday 18th August until Friday 22nd August in the Business Conference Centre at Cumbernauld College (http://www.cumbernauld.ac.uk/bcc). IBM have confirmed that all those in attendance have the opportunity to become System i Certified by sitting the System i Operations Certification on the final day of the event. There will be no cost for this as all exams will…
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Vanessa Ranaldi left SQA last week, when her contract expired. Vanessa’s departure coincided with other changes to the Computing team so I thought it would be a good idea to update the organisation chart for the team. Here’s the current version. HN SVQ team – Upload a Document to Scribd Read this document on Scribd: HN SVQ team We were sorry to see Vanessa go since she had been responsible for a number of projects in her time at SQA…
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I am in London today, attending a meeting of awarding bodies to discuss the new E-Skills‘ National Occupational Standards (NOS). These Standards form the basis of SVQs. There will be a public consultation on the new Standards at the end of this month, so this was an opportunity for the Awarding Bodies to get an early look at the emerging version. The revised Standards will ultimately result in revised SVQs and, given the focus on all qualifications recognising occupational standards,…
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An invitation to the HND Computer Games consultation event was despatched to all FE centres last week. This event is being held on Tuesday 12th August in the Carlton Hotel in Edinburgh from 10.00am until 12.30pm. If you would like to attend, please contact Scott Miller at ict@sqa.org.uk to book your place. We have chosen this date to coincide with the Edinburgh Interactive Games Festival, which specialises on gaming and games culture. This takes place from Sunday 10th August until…
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