Digitalkatie's blog

NC DMC: Comparison chart of units at different levels

I've spent a great deal of the morning trying to get my head around the core and optional units for the National Certificate in Digital Media Computing at the different levels.

For each of the levels 4,5 and 6 (Int 1, Int 2 and Higher) there is a long list of optional units at different levels.  There is a lot of crossover, but I wasn't sure how much overlap there was.  I have an SQA spreadsheet with them as a long list, but I wanted to show for each unit which levels it could count towards.

This is now available here.  

Interestingly it looks like this might be the first time this has been done as there are some anomalies, particularly with the core units.  Some of the core units are valid as optional units at other levels.  

For example, you could teach the six Int 1 core units, then progress on to the Int 2 core units with your class.  The topics are the same, however that would be the pupils completed their NC in DMC without actually having selected any optional units.

Also, why is the level 5 unit in Computing: Problem Solving and Planning not a valid unit for the Higher NC but all the other non-core level 5 units are on the list?  Strange.

It is a really huge set of lists so I can understand why these problems have slipped through.  I would hope that no-one would want to teach the Int 2 NC without covering any optional units.  If nothing else, there are some really interesting and fun units on the list!

NC in Media: a first look

I was at a very interesting session at the AMES conference today on the new National Certificate in Media.

I had been interested in this from the Digital Media Computing perspective. I had been hoping that there would be more crossover with the two NCs but I have been disappointed. It is still an interesting course though.

As with all NCs, students need to do 12 units, six of which are core (compulsory) units.

My hope was that the optional units would include units also on the NC DMC list. My initial idea was that at my school students could do the NC DMC in S3-S5 then in S6 they could pick up the extra units that would be needed for the Media NC. Looking at the Media NC I now realise this would not be possible.

What is interesting is the amount of crossover, where with a bit of planning students could pick up two or more units for a project.

For example, imagine you're teaching video production by doing a project where students film and edit a short film. As long as copyright and file formats are studied and discussed then students could gain the Media: Basic Video Editing unit and the Computing: Video Editing unit. The performance criteria for both units are very similar. Chances are you could also award units in Working With Others and Problem Solving as well.

I think it will require more analysis (and I'm working from memory on the Computing units as I'm on the train home) but I think there is potential for picking up a lot of units in this fashion. They may not lead to a qualification or award in school but it may be that pupils can they go on to complete NCs at FE college.

Another interesting thought is that there is a huge potential for departments collaborating and working together to cover NC units in a shorter period of time. For example students in S5 could do the NC Media across three or four columns involving English, Art, Computing and Business Studies. Saying this, I think it would be more practical and sensible to send the pupils interested in this off to college where they have the skills, resources and equipment to teach TV or Radio to a higher standard.

So why would schools be interested in the NC in Media? It is a flexible course where the core units do not specify a particular industry so it can be adapted to fit skills and interests of the school. The sectors studied can be TV, radio, film, animation, computer games, interactive media, press, advertising, music and literature. The ownership, organisation, jobs roles and regulation within these industries are studied. The creative process is also studied and students then research and develop creative concepts for different platforms.

The course is highly practical. One of the core units is a Media Project (a double unit) and another is Working With Others. Do a big web design or computer game project and that's half of the core units completed already.

The crossovers with the NC in DMC seem to be in video production, radio production / sound recording and basic website development.

The major downside to the NC in Media is there are currently no National Progress Awards. I see this as being crutial to running NCs in schools. The SQA are at the stage of seeing if there is a demand for NPAs in Media. If you are at all interested in teaching this in the future I suggest you contact the SQA and express your NPA desires!

From personal experience I have found the SQA are open to suggestions for NPAs. Julie McLaren at Forrester suggested an NPA in Computer Games Development and now a few of us are planning the awards. We're at an early stage but it is very interesting. 

Don't just moan that the SQA aren't listening - get involved and make suggestions! What do YOU want to teach?!

DMC: re-evaluating the budget

My school is a 20:20 funded school. This means there has been extra funding to run special projects. I was hoping to get funding from the final last bits of funds.

The initial plan was to get five iMacs and set up a separate classroom for media/video work that could be booked by anyone in the school.

We were also hoping to get Adobe Web suite or Design suite. The idea was that I could teach pupils using industry standard software. This would be incredibly valuable for pupils to have on their CVs.

I was told that there maybe enough funds left for this. Later, howver, was told there wasn't enough for the macs and I would only have £2000 for software.

I went away and thought lots and reseached lots. I found three free animation packages, but all drawing based rather than object based like Flash. I don't think my drawing skills are good enough to rely solely on this and I could see kids being turned off animation if their drawings couldn't match their imagination.

There is also the issue that the SQA Animation unit seems to require Adobe Flash (although it doesn't say so). There isn't anything comparible to Flash. The closest I could find was Toon Boom, but the cost is nearly the same so I'd rather go for Flash. Walter McCrorie at Stevenson did tell me about a really cool Toon Boom feature though: you can import video and then draw on top of it, so you could use live action video to turn your friend into a cartoon!

So, my plan was to get 11 copies of Flash, 11 copies of Microsoft Expression Studio (It's not Adobe Web or Design but it has the advantage of free pupil copies for home use) and 10 Bamboo graphics tablets (to use with the free drawing-based animation software).

I've now been told there's maybe only £700 left in the budget so I can have the graphics tablets but that's it.

I think I'd be better getting as many copies of Flash as possible. The pupils could do more as group work, pulling together video, images and sounds that they source or create. The difficulty is initially teaching the application when sharing computers, however I'm working on discussion with Stevenson College and I probably still know a few of the Telford lecturers from when I taught there. Hopefully I should be able to arrange a day or two based at college for the pupils to learn the application (and while I learn too!)

Digital Media Computing: Verification

For your information, the NC Digital Media Computing is auto-verified by the SQA, as are all the units and NPAs. This means any centre currently providing SQA units can offer these without having to fill in lots of forms and be verified.

We have also been assured that the course (the NPAs) count for statistics and STACS, so it shouldn't affect how your school is doing in the statistics. I don't know very much about this though so plase don't ask me ;-)

Digital Media Computing: a shopping list (part 2)

So, what else might I need for teaching a bunch of units when we haven't decided what units we will do as it depends on SQA deadlines, pupil interest, training courses available and budgets?

Video:
I have bid for five video cameras, tripods and some DV tapes. Alternatively I think we could borrow video cameras from around the school when we need to use them. We won't be going for fancy 3CCD cameras. Maybe we can find a way to borrow some once the pupils have mastered the techniques on little cheap commercial camcorders.

There is no way the lousy BT spec PCs will cope with Premiere Elements, so we will borrow the Apple laptops when we need to do editing.

Still images:
A bunch of digital cameras, maybe 5-6 per class of 20 pupils. You can get good Canon digital cameras and memory cards for £70 each these days. I would have liked to go for digital SLR cameras, but I think the cost is just to great. I'll maybe see if we can borrow these for a short time to give the pupils the experience of them.

We have a couple of scanners. I think that will be sufficient, but we may need to look again at this in the future.

Audio:
Microphones and Audacity open-source (free) software. We will also use the radio equipment that we have access to in the school

Games design
I have put a bid in for Mission Maker games design software (it is a wish list!) as we had talked with Modern Languages about using it for a cross-curricular project with the S2 pupils. It would be great for the games design units too. We will use Scratch, but Mission Maker would be wonderful, particularly for improving the kids' language skills.

Hardware:
At some point before 2011 we might need to acquire some PC components to build into a computer. I'm not going to teach the Hardware unit until S5 as it will be easier with smaller numbers and by then the pupils may be able to afford to buy components themselves to build their own gaming PC.

There will also be training costs and books/manuals. This depends on the software options we choose, so I can't work out costs yet.

So there we go, one more step along the path to changing our courses. The S2 Course Choice booklet got printed this week so I'm hopeful that it's going ahead! Now I just have to persuade some S2 pupils they want to choose the course!

Digital Media Computing: a shopping list (part 1)

I handed in my wish list today. We are able to bid for the last of the 20:20 funding so I wanted to bid for software and hardware I think we'll need for the new course.

The main cost is software. I've given five different options. My best option is getting Adobe Creative Suite Web Premium. This includes Flash, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator and Fireworks. I think this is worth the huge cost (even with an educational discount) because the pupils will be learning industry standard packages. Having them listed on your CV gives you a much better chance of a job than if you have other software packages writen down.

Alternatives to Web Premium are
a) Get Web Design (without Photoshop) and buy Photoshop Elements (is it hugely different??)

b) Get Web Design (without Photoshop) and use Fireworks instead.

c) Buy Flash and Photoshop Elements, then use the free educational licences for Microsoft Expression Studio for web design.

d) Buy Flash, then use the free educational licences for Microsoft Expression Studio for web design and graphics

The cost difference between a school site licence for Adobe Web Elements and my alternative d) is about five grand! I can't believe how expensive Adobe Education prices. Microsoft and AutoDesk have the right idea, giving software away to students and schools. Unfortunately I still think Adobe has the edge over Microsoft in terms of employability.

I have consulted a couple of web/media people I know on Twitter, but I would welcome anyone's opinions on this. What do you feel?

Bye Standard Grade, hello Digital Media Computing

I finally managed to get together my funding bid for almost everything I thing I'll need to start teaching the new NC Digital Media. I'm hoping to blog about the process of changing so that other schools can learn what we're doing (and do it better!).

I'll blog about my shopping list later, but today I'll explain what we're changing to and why.

I hate Standard Grade Computing. It is pretty much the course I did when I was a kid. I imagine in the late 80's and early 90's it was an incredible course and kids loved finding out about robotics and virtual reality and expert systems. I certainly loved it. However as a teacher I find it very difficult to explain the relevance of this stuff to kids lives.

I started researching alternative courses in 2006/7. I found out about the English course, called DIDA, which looked promising, and industry certification, but I was told I had to offer SQA courses for the school stats.

The SQA have now developed a National Certificate in Digital Media Computing at three levels: Intermediate 1, Intermediate 2 and Higher. An NC is equivalent to first year in college and would hopefuly mean pupils could then get accepted into a wide range of HNC and HND courses (direct entry into second year).

The NC consists of a set of six core units and six optional units from a choice of almost 60 units. The units to choose from include animation, games design, web design, graphics, audio and video editing, etc.

Sets of three units group to give you additional awards, called National Progress Awards. There are NPAs in Web Design and Digital Literacy etc. There are lots more sitting temptingly on a list with a release date of Dec08 and Jan09 but I don't know what's happening to them. These are in Games Design, animation, still image, sound and video, etc. I REALLY want to do these, so if anyone in the SQA knows about these please let me know! The SQA call centre weren't particulary useful and everyone else has their answering machines permanently turned on!

It looks like teaching different levels of units at the same time will work, and only half of the units need to be at the level of the NC (eg you only need 6 units at Int2 level to get an Int 2 NC) which helps students progress and advance.

I'm going to have to think carefully about which units to teach when. Some units will work well across the whole time. for example there is a blogging unit, so pupils could blog throughout their course (and be reading blogs too).

My plan is to do three units in S3 and three units in S4. Three of the units over the two years will combine for an National Progression Award. If they choose to stay on in fifth year, and I hope this will be a good incentive to stay on, they can complete the other six units. Of those, two can be completed in other departments, the literacy and numeracy units. That leaves four to complete in S5 Computing time. Actually I'm hoping to do more than three a year in S3/4, but we'll see how it goes. We won't have to deal with prelims and revision which should help. It's going to be very different not having to cram content and facts into kids as quick as I can. I need to remember to take it easy and have time to explore and have fun learning!

Samba de Amigo!

We bought Samba de Amigo yesterday.  It was our anniversary present to each other (yes, we're that sad!)  It is brilliant, even better than when it was on the Dreamcast.  Our friend Stuart had it and would bring it to our New Year's Day parties and we would hook it up to a data projector I had borrowed from work.  Ah those were the days! (Of course the vast amount of alcoholic cocktails helped with the inhibitions of standing shaking maracas)

We started to get quite despondent.  It took us about half an hour to configure the game.  The key factor is the new version is not so dependent on height as the Dreamcast version, where you would have to enter your height into the game.

The Wii version also factors in angle of the wiimotes/maracas.  If you are shaking high, point the wiimotes upwards.  You don't actually have to lift them too much.  For the middle shakes, keep the wiimotes level.  For posing with both wiimotes to one side (this is where we had the major block in the configuration stage) point them behind you.  It seems to work. 

Happy Samba-ing everyone!

TeachMeet08 @ the Scottish Learning Festival

Next week is the Scottish Learning Festival (previously known at SETT) at the SECC in Glasgow. Hopefully all the Digital family will be going along.  In preparation I've been working on a presentation about the science class I helped with in New York. 

Louis now has Moo cards to hand out when he's networking, and a couple of snazzy handpainted t-shirts with educational slogans on them.  On the back of one is an advert for TeachMeet:

Hopefully Louis will attract lots of attention during the day and then lots of teachers will come along for the free drink to see the presentations and chat to other educators ;-)

Mobile Learning Trial: a reflection?

Recently I've been seeing lots of references to the Handheld Learning Conference in October this year.  Last year I presented to the conference about the mobile phone project in our school that was about to be launched to the pupils.  I'm now thinking about how the project has gone.  I'd say "gone so far" but I think the project is pretty much over.

About a week or so after I got back from the conference we distributed the phones to the senior pupils.  It was a few months later than planned but at least we'd managed it.  The idea was that with unlimited internet access on the phones, the pupils would be able to research on the web, upload photos and videos of science experiments, and record French, German and Spanish speaking practice for example (I believe we are the only school in Edinburgh to offer three foreign languages)

There were teething problems.  Issues with the keyboard on one phone, another phone that didn't have the website filtering installed, sites that were blocked that we wanted unblocked, a cracked screen.  Nothing too major within the first few days.  However a couple of days after the launch I had to go off on sick leave.  This was the first problem that we couldn't really have avoided.  There was now no-one with the time to do the troubleshooting or chasing up companies.

The bonus to the project was the phone provider, O2, offered us unlimited calls and texts to other O2 customers.  This meant that the pupils could call and text each other at no extra expense.  We were told there was £5 of 'credit' on the phones, and as soon as that was used it would cut off and they wouldn't be able to make any calls to non-O2 numbers (except 999, of course). 

This turned out to be the second problem we couldn't really have avoided. 

This cut-off wasn't set up properly by O2.  Yup.  Give a bunch of 17 year olds a phone and say there is £5 of credit before cutting off and they will use it.  We encouraged them to use it.  We were happy for them to be using the phones.  The kids did point out they felt they had been using it a lot so we checked up and were assured by the company that there was a £5 cut-off in place.  There wasn't.  I don't know the exact figure, but I believe it was pretty scary(*).

It took us a while to work this out though.  First some phones' data connections were intermittently not working.  It got confusing and we couldn't figure out why some pupils could get internet and others couldn't.  The already-overworked teachers involved in the trial were getting very stressed.  I visited the school under the disguise of bringing in some science resources that Sean didn't want any more.  As I signed in I was warned by the bursar "I trust you're not here to do any work?!" I assured her I wasn't and was then warned I wasn't insured if I was working.  Oh, what a workaholic reputation I have!

After testing the modem settings then switching sim cards round, we realised the issue was not with the phones but the sims, or more particularly the accounts.  After a couple of phone calls we realised the problem.  It took a while and a lot of phone calls I believe, but the pupils phones and internet connections were working again...until O2's billing computers didn't speak to their call blocking computers the next month.  The system still thought we owed them lots of money so started blocking access again.  I think this also happened again the next month.

By this time, naturally, the pupils had got fed up wih the phones not working and had stopped bringing them in to school.  The teachers in the trial couldn't rely on the phones working or the kids having the phones, so they didn't use them in much lessons.  This then gave the pupils another reason not to bring them, as they weren't using them in school.  By the time the issues were resolved the pupils were into the serious revising season.

Is there a way to rescue the project?  I'm not sure.  We still have the phones, we could launch again with next year's fifth years, but we'd need to find enough money for the year's line rental, and this would be difficult to get given this year's success rate.  We have the line rental until October, but it wouldn't be fair to the new fifth years to give them phones for two months then take them away again.

Could we have done anything differently?  I don't think so.  The only thing would have been releasing someone for a couple of periods a week for some time to do the troubleshooting and phone calls so the problems could have been resolved quicker.  Unfortunately this wasn't possible because we had staff off ill (sorry!)  I did even wonder if I should have carried on for another week or so more, but I really was struggling to cope by the time I went off ill.

Should I apply to present again at the Handheld Learning conference this year?  I'd like to, although I think it will be difficult getting time off school once I'm back.  I don't think we fit into the strand of "successful Scottish projects" though!  Maybe we were.  It felt like a huge victory getting past all the beaurocracy and legal paperwork to get the phones to the kids in the first place. 

Were the beaurocrats right, that we shouldn't give mobile phones to pupils?  NO.  I still firmly believe that this is the right way to go in education.  Mobile technology is enabling and motivating for young people, and all young people should have equal access to technology.  Mobile devices let young people learn wherever they are, and in ways that are exciting and fun.  This is the way forward, we just need mobile phone providers to be more adaptable and aware of the education market and students' needs.



(* all O2's fault.  No public money has been wasted on huge phone bills for teenagers, trust me!)