We held the launch event for the updated National Certificate in Computing with Digital Media yesterday at the Stirling Management Centre in Stirling University. There was an excellent attendance with 46 people there, including many from schools. The purpose of the event was to explain the changes to the current award (NC Digital Media Computing) and to outline how we will support centres when they move over to the new award. The contents of the new qualification appeared to be…
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We held an information event yesterday for the new Digital Passport qualification. The event was held in Stirling. Nineteen centres attended. It’s taken a long time to get to this stage so it was a pleasure to move on from qualification development to explaining what’s in the qualification. My presentation covered the contents of the new award in some detail. Digital Passport is a digital literacy award and, we think, its contents are pretty innovative, covering such diverse topics as big data,…
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The College Development Network held their Annual Computing Conference yesterday in Stirling, organised by Gerry Dougan. There was an excellent turn-out, on a beautiful day in a lovely location. The focus of this year’s event was teaching and learning. It commenced, appropriately, with HMIe Sheila Page giving feedback on the forthcoming Aspect report on Computing in colleges (due September). Sheila’s comments were generally positive, and made it clear that improvements had been made since the previous report (in 2009) that…
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The last few years has seen huge changes in the college sector, with many merging into “regional colleges”. From my subject’s perspective, this has meant that Computing Departments have combined across several centres, often into a faculty structure along with other subjects. I like to think that me and my team are pretty well known in centres but I am less familiar with these new combined course teams. So, during the new session, commencing August, I hope to work my…
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Central verification of the Graded Units for HNC Computing and HNC Interactive Media is taking place today (and yesterday). Half a dozen verifiers, led by the Senior External Verifier, are in the Glasgow office to look over 29 question papers (and scripts) submitted by 24 centres. It’s going well. The team has made good progress and, although they’ve come across one or two issues, their general view is that centres have done a good job. They pointed out to me…
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SQA has produced a new leaflet on vocational Computing qualifications. It can be downloaded here [PDF]. Alternatively, you can use my portfolio diagram.
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I’ve previously written about the pilot of Digital Passport next year. So far, we’ve had a great response, with almost 30 centres expressing an interest in getting involved. Hilary is currently organising an information event for these centres, when we will explain in more detail what’s in the qualification and how the pilot will work. The event will take place on Tuesday, 24 June in Stirling. I recently updated the qualification FAQ, which now includes a link to the draft…
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The final report from the Commission for Developing Scotland’s Young Workforce was published last week and I recently took time out to read it. The report is called Education Working For All [PDF], was commissioned by the Scottish Goverment, and was written by Sir Ian Wood. The background to the report is the (almost) one in five young people who are unemployed in Scotland – three times higher than the adult unemployment rate. The report focuses on the majority of…
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We are looking for writers and vetters to produce Assessment Support packs for new competence based qualifications in Information Security at SCQF levels 6 and 8. The assessments will be required for knowledge and understanding as well as practical tasks. Support material for 8 Units at each level is needed by September this year. There may be existing material for HN Units that could be re-purposed for this work. If you are interested, or would like more information, please contact…
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I’ve previously mentioned my operational plan for the coming year (April 2014-March 2015). There are two HN developments in the plan. The HNC/D Interactive Media is due to be reviewed this year. We will be forming a Qualification Development Team (QDT) in the near future to take this forward. We’ve already got some volunteers but it’s not too late to get involved. Contact Caroline if you want to know more or join the QDT. The other development is a little…
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