Heads of Computing Event

Just a reminder to say we have limited places available at the Heads of Computing Event on Friday 3rd December 2010 in Edinburgh. If you are intending on coming along, please register soon here.

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CISCO units

A writing team responsible for producing the updated HN units that link to the new CISCO curriculum met this morning to take forward this work. We hope to produce new units by the end of March next year. These units will fully incorporate the CISCO Explorer and Discoverer curriculum. Representatives of City of Glasgow, Motherwell, Angus, Cardonald, and Stow colleges attended. A key part of the training was to try to produce very generic units that are fully compatible with…

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Qualification Support Team for NC Computing

The Qualification Support Team (QST) responsible for supporting non-advanced awards met this afternoon in the SQA offices in Glasgow. Representatives of various colleges attended to discuss ways in which SQA can support non-advanced awards such as the National Certificate in Digital Media Computing and the various NPAs that exist at SCQF Levels 4, 5 and 6, such as PC Passport. The main purpose of each QST meeting is to discuss the suggestions for improvement or support that we receive from…

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Engage for education

The Scottish Government set up the Engage for Education website to stimulate discussion about education in Scotland. The associated blog has posts from various individuals about their daily work in education. I was recently invited to contribute to the blog about the new NPAs in Computer Games Development. You can see my post here.

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Follow us on Twitter

The Computing team started to use Twitter around a year ago and, since then, there has been slow but steady growth in the number of people who follow us. We presently have 155 followers. But it would be better if that was 500. We use Twitter for messages that we would not normally post on the blog (such as to let you know when one of us is on leave – good to know if you are waiting for a…

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Qualification Support team for HN awards

The Qualification Support Team (QST) for HN/PDA/SVQ awards met this morning. It meets twice per year. The QST has responsibility for ensuring that our HN/PDA/SVQ awards are properly supported by SQA. The main part of the meeting is spent going over the various forms submitted by centres, which ask for changes or clarifications to units or assessments. If these suggestions are supported by the QST then I would normally implement them. We received eight suggestions for change today, of which…

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Scottish Education Quality and Improvement Agency

I got back from holiday yesterday and started working through my inbox. I got to an important message this afternoon about a new education body called the Scottish Education Quality and Improvement Agency that will take over the functions of the Inspectorate of Education and Learning and Teaching Scotland from 1 July 2011. This new body sounds like it will be an important part of the Scottish education scene in the coming year, particularly with the introduction of the Curriculum…

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PDA in Web Design

We are currently undertaking consultation on the development of a new PDA in Web Design (linking with CIW Web Design Specialist qualification). As part of this consultation, a questionnaire has been compiled which the results will help form the structure of the new award.  I would be grateful if you could take a few minutes to undertake the questionnaire by clicking on the URL below. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/K6X9YY5 The deadline date for responses is Friday 29th October 2010. Your input would be…

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Annual Heads of Computing Event

It’s that time again!!  The Annual Heads of Computing Event will take place this year on Friday 3rd December 2010 at 1000 hours in the Barcelo Edinburgh Carlton Hotel. We are busy organising this event and hope to have a range of items for presentation and discussion. To register, please click on the URL below: http://headsofcomputing.eventbrite.com/ As places are limited, please ensure you book early to secure your registration. A maximum of two places can be reserved by each registered delegate. Look…

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We’re moving

I appreciate that the readers of this blog don’t really care about the internal structures of SQA, but the vocational Computing team are moving to a new area due to an internal restructure. The new area is called Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) and the important bit is that the two parts of the Computing team will be working together (the “school” team and the “vocational” team). We’re not physically joining, so I will continue to lead the vocational…

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