[Stephen Stewart]

02/07/2013 at 7:27 pm

A colleague noticed the SQA last week added some more AVU and coursework tasks on the SQA secure site.

Music Fans is now available for Nat 4 and Games Review is available for National 5. Hopefully this will benefit multi level classes.

Had a look through the Games Review Coursework for National 5 and I’m quite surprised at one bit that says “You have to develop the website in HTML, rather than using a web authoring package”.

I understand the website is still pretty basic but worrying about how much time I would have to set aside for pupils to learn enough HTML to be able to do this independently.

[k.falconer]

02/07/2013 at 9:39 pm

Hi Stephen,

I agree with regard to the time needed to teach HTML
Some pupils learn HTML quickly while other need some support to learn the basics

[Darren Brown]

03/07/2013 at 8:24 am

I’m glad the SQA are looking at bi-level projects but although the names are the same the tasks are completely different. This does not help the main issue of having a few pupils start N5 project but post prelim they will still have to do a pretty much a new task for N4.

I agree that the full HTML is too much – we have asked a few times and been told only a little HTML/JavaScript/SQL.

The SQA have already just added a lot of content in the new tables – everyone I hear says they are short of time.

I’m still hoping for another couple of projects that are properly bi-level within the same task.

Although, there is talk of pupils with all N4 or majority N4 courses in S4 not getting any study leave – this may give more time for AVU. Anyone else talking about this?

[Lucinda]

03/07/2013 at 11:05 am

I agree too it is imposible to teach all tags in HTML in the time given, using W3Schools and asking pupils to practice HTML at home on their own has helped tremendously, for the assessment(web authouring) they are only required to know a little HTML. it also makes it easier to teach if using a good software like Dreamweaver CS5.

[sturnbull]

03/07/2013 at 6:53 pm

I’ve not looked at the difference between the N4/5 tasks but the SQA have recently confirmed that the idea behind them is to actually avoid having to do two projects
and allow the teacher to re-assess a completed N5 project at N4 AVU level in the event the pupil fails the exam.

[Kate Farrell]

03/07/2013 at 10:43 pm

Code Avengers or Codecademy combined with Mozilla Thimble are extremely useful for learning HTML without a software package. Code Avengers also lets you see the progress and responses of all your pupils. Hackasaurus is also fun too