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Computing & Digital Blog

October 4, 2013

Digital Literacy for Life

SQA is a supporting a new initiative from the BCS to promote digital literacy skills. Their Digital Literacy for Life (DLfL) programme aims to encourage schools to deliver digital literacy across the curricula and also to inform employers about the value of the “digitally literate empoyee”. A new website to support this initiative was launched this week. SQA is actively supporting the BCS. I am a member of the Education Committee and will try to ensure that Scottish centres benefit…

Categories: Computing

Bobby 0

October 3, 2013

Plans for 2014/15

I’ve been asked to start to think about my plans for next year. Each year me and my team create an operational plan, which defines what it is we are planning to develop during the year. For example, this year’s operational plan includes the reviews of PC Passport and NC Digital Media Computing. SQA carries out “quinquenial” (5 yearly) reviews of all its awards, and these will automatically be added to my plan, but if you have any suggestions for…

Categories: Computing

Bobby 0

September 27, 2013

Digital literacy

The term “digital literacy” isn’t new but it’s one I am hearing more and more with each passing month. As you may know, The Royal Society recommended that digital literacy be recognised as one (of three) strands to the subject of Computing. There has been a number of recent reports about the need to improve the digital literacy skills of UK (and global) citizens. SQA responded to The Royal Society report by creating a cognate group for Digital Literacy. Digital…

Categories: Computing

Bobby 0

September 17, 2013

HN update letter

I sent an NC update letter to centres last month and yesterday I completed a similar letter for HN awards, which will be sent to colleges later this week. Readers of this blog can get it now. The letter contains important information about such things as Graded Units and local options within HN awards. You may want to download it. There’s nothing in the letter that readers of this blog don’t know but you may want to share it with…

Categories: Computing

Bobby 0

September 16, 2013

Verification Group changes

I was informed today that the three new/revised Verification Groups (VGs) had now been created. They are: 288 Information Technology357 Computer Science358 Digital Literacy. I’ve previously explained the rationale behind these changes. This change will have operational implications for centres (in the sense that verification visits will now be based around these three groups) but, more importantly, it has philosophical implications. It defines a particular view of the subject (“Computing”) with three parts. The first part, Digital Literacy, is foundational,…

Categories: Computing

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