I just commissioned support material for the new Blog unit. There will be sample assessments and learning material to support the unit. I’m not sure about dates yet but I expect the assessments to be available for September and the teaching material to be available around October. We’re taking an unusual approach to the development of learning material. In the spirit of the new Social Software unit that we’re working on, we’re planning on producing the material collaboratively using a…
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June was the best ever month for the blog, with almost 1500 hits during the month. That’s almost twice as high as the previous best month. It’s good to see people begin to visit the site regularly.
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We validated three more Professional Development Awards today. Last month we validated three PDAs linked to Microsoft certification. Today’s awards are linked to different vendors: Certificate in Computer Concepts (linked to CompTIA) Advanced Certificate in Database Programming (linked to Oracle) Advanced Diploma in Network Technology (linked to Cisco). The validation went well. The Validation Panel (led by Sarah Lennox of CompTIA) placed two conditions and two recommendations on the proposals. We’re hoping to have the awards validated by the beginning…
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I attended a meeting at Abertay University today to discuss a local development relating to computer games. The Dundee-based Access to Industry programme wants to offer games-based curriculum to its students (mostly disadvantaged young people) and I was there to suggest suitable courses. The meeting was interested in Stow College’s recent award. But I couldn’t offer many specific units relating to computer games (at NC or HN level). So it was agreed to take this forward with a view to…
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Walter Patterson retired last week. I attended Walter’s retirement celebration on Friday evening. It was held in the Glasgow Metropolitan College. Walter has been an HMI for nearly 20 years and during that time he has been instrumental in shaping Computing/IT education within Scotland. His knowledge, experience and unique character will be sorely missed. I’ve served on numerous committees with him – many of which were difficult meetings but Walter always handled them well. I remember one in particular when…
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I created a blog to record the development of the new HND Computing award. It didn’t really work. It received 667 hits – which is a lot less than I expected. So it can’t be considered a success. Which is a little surprising since the basic blog format (a chronological journal) seems a good way to record the developments that take place when creating a new qualification. I guess we’ll have to reflect on the HND Computing blog and try…
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The HND Computing Arrangements have been updated to remove some typos. The new version (v1.1) [PDF] was uploaded to the HN Computing e-group this morning.
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I arranged for a letter to be sent to centres this morning. The letter contains important information about the new HND (such as the run-out dates of the existing awards). The letter (and enclosures) should arrive in centres next week.
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Angela got married yesterday. So she’s now Angela Lees – not Angela Orr. She looked beautiful and we all had a great day.
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The National Unit on blogging is now finalised. Weblogs [DOC] is an Intermediate 2 unit which covers the basics of finding, creating and tracking blogs. It shows how to locate blogs, what blogs can be used for, how to create and use a blog, and how to track blogs using aggregation tools (such as RSS). It’s not entirely hands-on since students are exposed to the history of blogs, shown how to evaluate a blog, and introduced to the theory of…
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