Meeting with Scotland's Colleges team

Me, Caroline and Hilary met with the corresponding team from Scotland's Colleges this morning. Colin and Gerry came through to the SQA offices in Glasgow. The purpose of the meeting was to update each other on our respective plans, and explore ways of working together.



It was a productive meeting, with lots of good ideas coming out of it. One of the things we discussed was teaching and learning materials for the new HNs that will be produced as part of the on-going HN Review. SQA will produce assessments for the mandatory units within these awards, but we recognised that centres may need additional support to implement these new qualifications.

We also discussed the problem of "information fragmentation". One of the findings of the recent satisfaction survey was that you found the different sources of information (the SQA website, this blog, Twitter, etc.) confusing. So we agreed to look at ways of bringing this together (including information provided by Scotland's Colleges).

SQA and Scotland's Colleges already work together in various ways. For example, Colin is a member of the Sector Panel for Computing & IT, and Caroline is a member of the Subject Network for Computing provided by SC. But we agreed to strengthen these links.

Pedagogy is an important part of the SC role, and we spent some time discussing ways that teaching and learning could be improved.

Good meetings have good outcomes, and we agreed lots of actions to be taken after this meeting. Hopefully, you will see some of these actions reported on this blog in the coming months. We also agreed to have future meetings like this one, perhaps including other national agencies, such as the new Education Scotland.

CAA Conference

I attended the International Computer Assisted Assessment Conference today, in Southampton, where I presented a paper on the assessment of online writing. It was a good event with interesting keynote talks and presentations on a variety of topics such as the potential for wikis to assess collaborative writing, the barriers to the uptake of e-assessment, and selecting questions from an item bank.

My own presentation was based on a recent paper I wrote about the challenges in assessing online writing such as discussion forums and blogs. Some recent research I carried out indicated that current practice was not good. The talk seemed to be well received.

CAA conference 2010: Assessing online writing

View more presentations from bobbyelliott.

It was announced at the conference that a new International Journal of E-Assessment would be launched in the next few months, which would seek to share good practice in the design and implementation of online assessments. It sounds like an excellent initiative. The first edition of the journal will publish all of the papers presented at this conference.

Working with CEOP

I was in London today to meet with representatives of CEOP, who we are working with on a new qualification relating to child protection called the PDA in Online Protection & Safeguarding of Children. This qualification is designed for teachers, police officers, social workers and others who work with children.

As far as I know, it's the first national qualification in this area in the world and, partly as a result of its innovative nature, it has been a long time in development. But we are now ready to pilot it. The qualification consists of two units and we plan to pilot the first unit (Online Protection of Children) during August and September.

CEOP hopes that everyone who completes their Ambassador programme will go on and at least undertake the above unit and, perhaps, the PDA too.

Contact Caroline for more information about this qualification.

Introducing Getac 9213 Business Rugged Laptop

Getac, a brand known mostly for its fully rugged notebooks, is introducing its first business rugged laptop. Getac 9213 is its smallest and lightest business-rugged notebook computer. The Getac 9213 has a very thin and sleek design, a big shift from what we normally think of when the brand comes to mind. Group Mobile has added the Getac 9213 to its line of business rugged laptops.

Getac 9213 Features:

Intel® Centrino® 2 Processor technology
Drop Tested up to 75cm
Excellent Liquid-Resistance
Up to 8 Hours of Battery Life
Embedded Fingerprint and TPM Security Functions
802.11 a/g/n WLAN and Bluetooth
Magnesium Alloy Chassis
Shock-protected HDD
13.3'' WXGA TFT LCD with LED Backlight
1.3M Pixels CMOS Camera
2 Digital Mic Array

For more information on the Getac 9213 Business Rugged Laptop visit www.groupmobile.com or call us at 1-866-RUGGED8

Strathclyde Police adopt the Internet Safety qualification

I met with Rob Hay of Strathclyde Police this afternoon to discuss arrangements for the Police to incorporate the Internet Safety qualification into their Cadet Training Scheme.

Around 70 new cadets will enter the programme in October and they will all undertake the Internet Safety unit [PDF] as part of their training. The cadets are typically school-leavers, aged between 16-18 years old, who enter the scheme with a view to becoming Police Officers at the end of the two year programme.

Rob was keen to include the unit because of the increasing problem of cyber-crime and the unit (among other things) covers identity theft, grooming and phishing. The qualification's flexibility was also a selling point since the cadets can self-teach using a supplied CD-ROM or study online - or even use their mobile phones (point your phone's browser here to see a demo).