August 17, 2007 - Bobby -
I’ve recently received a number of e-mails and phone calls about the support materials for the new National Certificate awards. Although the Arrangements and the unit specifications are all available, the assessment support packs (ASPs) are not yet published and some centres want to see these as soon as possible. I’ve checked with SQA Publications and the ASPs will begin to appear on SQA Secure from the end of this month, so centres won’t have long to wait. But, if…
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August 13, 2007 - Bobby -
Angela and I met with the convener of the validation panel and a representative of the Qualification Design Team to lift the conditions that were set at the validation event for this award in June. The meeting went well and all of the conditions and recommendations were lifted, meaning that this award is now validated. The one outstanding issue relates to the Graded Unit (GU). The GU will be an examination and we had an interesting discussion around pass marks,…
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August 10, 2007 - Bobby -
Several of today’s newspapers carried stories about a government report on the dangers of using the Internet, describing the current situation as “the Wild West”. There’s no doubt that concerns about Internet safety are growing… so I hope that many centres offer the new Internet Safety qualification. I’ve received lots of inquiries from prospective students over the summer, asking what centres offer the award. Many enquirers were particularly interested in doing the unit flexibly, either at home or online. Our…
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August 10, 2007 - Bobby -
I’ve just finished reading a report [PDF] from Futurelab about the digital divide in the UK. It makes interesting reading. If you manage to find the time to read it, I’d be interested in your comments.
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I attended a meeting this morning, which included an update from Gill MacFarlane about the current review of core skills. The core skill team in SQA has been consulting about the existing core skill framework with a view to updating it. The IT framework is badly in need of an update. The framework is in the final stages of being revised and the new version will be used to create new core skill units, which are due to be published…
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This new qualification replaces a number of Multimedia-related HN awards such as HNC Multimedia Web Development and HNC Interactive Multimedia Creation. It was validated in June but with a number of conditions, which the Qualification Development Team has been working on over the summer. They’re just about there now, and me and the convener of the validation panel (Walter Patterson) meet on Monday (13th) to (hopefully) lift the conditions and get this award on the books. It’s likely to be…
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Laura Hall started today, to replace Tony while he is seconded to a new post. Laura should be your first port of call for most routine information relating to Computing and IT. Laura can be contacted by e-mail or telephone (0845-213-5472). I’ll update the organisation chart at the first opportunity.
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I had lunch with Ron Dillin today. Ron and I were colleagues at Stow College in the early Nineties and it was good to catch up with things… and Ron’s views are always sensible and thought-provoking. We spent most of the time discussing issues facing FE Computing departments – particularly recruitment and student achievement (historically poor in this subject area). He also reminded me of the gender imbalance in Computing courses (typically, 10% of students are women). We discussed at…
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When I returned from my secondment, I said that I would re-invigorate the online communities and I’ve now set up a number of new groups to support various SQA awards. I’ve chosen Jiglu to host the groups since I prefer this service to Yahoo Groups – but neither one is as good as Smartgroups (RIP) in my opinion. Here are the groups… There is a group to support the new National Certificate in Digital Media Computing, one to support HNC/D…
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I met with Graeme Clark last week to discuss new online assessments for HNC Interactive Media and HNC Information Technology. We met with a couple of Computing verifiers to discuss the standards required from the assessments, which will be placed in a large item bank and made available to centres. The first task is to identify the units/outcomes that can be tested this way and I hope to work on that this week. The online assessments should be available from…
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