Scotland's College annual event

Me and my team attended the annual Scotland's Colleges' event yesterday. It was held in their Stirling offices. The event was entitled Computing, IT & Digital Media Conferernce 2012. As always, the event was well organised and well attended, with around 50-60 people in attendance, most of whom were college lecturers from across Scotland.


The keynote talk was given by Quintin Cutts of Glasgow University, who spoke about the teaching of Computer Science. Quintin is involved in the Curriculum for Excellence, and gave a fascinating talk about how the teaching of computer programming in schools is likely to change.

I followed Quintin, and gave an update on recent SQA developments, with particular focus on the on-going HN Review. Part of my presentation described the range of new qualifications that have been developed during the last 12 months (such as Internet Safety, NC Computer Games, and HNC Computing). I also described the new way that SQA is going to recognise vendor qualifications inside Higher National awards. My presentation seemed to be well received.

Scotlands colleges event june 2012

View more presentations from bobbyelliott.

There were a number of interesting workshops for delegates to choose from. I attended two: one from Google (about Google Apps for education) and one from Microsoft (about their range of certifications).

It was pleasing to see SQA qualifications figure so prominently throughout the event. For example, David Renton's (Reid Kerr College) talk on XNA4 explained how he used this technology to deliver the HNC in Computer Games Development.

Suzanne Scott's (Borders College) talk on interactive media was based around the HNC of the same name.

Please contact Gerry Dougan if you want to know more about Scotland's Colleges. Contact Hilary or contact Caroline if you want to know more about Computing qualifications at non-advanced or advanced level respectively.