Looking for web and game design? Try the SQA!

I got a letter through from the SQA this week that has made me so much more hopeful about courses that we can offer at 'Forthill' High (if we stay open - the Evening News today seemed to think we're on the brink of closure! Not true - I am looking forward to a day soon when parents choose to send their kids to Forthill instead of their default catchment school, but anyway, back to the SQA)

They have come up with a set of units and Int 1, Int 2 and Higher in topics like web design, computer games design, interactive media, web logs, social software (not sure if this includes web 2.0), installing hardware and software (we could get the kids to do the school's IT support - they can't do worse job than BT! ;-)

At first I was a bit disappointed as there were no courses linked to them (like Higher Games Design - how cool would that be?!) but I phoned up and found out that if you get 12 units (some compulsory, some optional) then they can get a National Certificate (NC) like Further Education colleges give out.

So initially we could offer some of the units and kids could carry on doing the rest at college, but we could work towards getting approval over the next few years to offer the NC ourselves. Kids could then go to college to do direct entry into HNC instead.

There are also National Progression Awards for set of three units like the three web design ones.

It's up to Higher lever but its not Highers though, so I'm not sure if kids will worry about getting into University. Not sure. We could offer these instead of Standard Grade Computing when we start doing certificated courses in S2 rather than S3 currently.

I am due to get an email inviting me into the yahoo group with lots of details and example materials from the units - I can't wait!

Comments

[Peter]

Hi,

that sounds great - could you post up a wee link if possible?