CiDA or BTEC ICT...(all you ICT teachers out there..RDM?)

RDM said:
Ah right, my mistake, the L2 is indeed a GCSE equivalent.
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So it wouldn't be a copmlete loss then?

RDM said:
Serif Web Plus is a simplified web design software package beloved by schools because it is a) Cheap and b) requires no knowledge of HTML to create web pages.

I hate it with a passion and am currently using Notepad to teach Y9 HTML instead. However if you want to be a web designer rather than a web developer its OK. I suppose. If you force me to give an opinion.
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He uses Dreamweaver at home and how much he knows about HTML I cannot say...how could I help him outside of school, with study aids and software etc other than what I have already mentioned (as they have rather large learning curves generally).
 
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Castiel said:
He is saying it was a problem nationwide for almost all students, not only this school. This concerns me also.

this is the link I was given:

http://www.kevinmcguinness.com/CiDA/

I don't know why they list only unit 1 and 3 either.
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This is the specification for L2 CiDA:

CiDA L2 Spec

To get it you need to do one compulsory unit (Unit 1) and one optional unit (Any of 2-4) the school has probably chosen 3 and will teach that to the entire cohort. Standard practice for most schools rather than giving the students the choice due to timetabling and teacher training issues.

Castiel said:
The GCSE Computing was not available to my son or anyone last year, it is only being made available to the new GCSE intake next year..so he cannot do that. I and he would have preferred that in the first place, but the school at the time said the BTEC was the better option.

He doesn't need ECDL, he is past that level tbh.
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That is a shame, will they be offering the GCE at A Level and would you son be able to do that even without the GCSE?
 
RDM said:
This is the specification for L2 CiDA:

CiDA L2 Spec

To get it you need to do one compulsory unit (Unit 1) and one optional unit (Any of 2-4) the school has probably chosen 3 and will teach that to the entire cohort. Standard practice for most schools rather than giving the students the choice due to timetabling and teacher training issues.
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Thanks, that's cleared that up.

RDM said:
That is a shame, will they be offering the GCE at A Level and would you son be able to do that even without the GCSE?
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The school doesn't have a 6th form. This is one of the issues I have, will the CiDA allow him to do the GCE Computing if he wants to, I cant find any information as to whether it would qualify him. The only thing I can see is that he could do a GCE in Media, which is pretty useless I would imagine.
 
Castiel said:
So it wouldn't be a copmlete loss then?
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I am going to have to offer a qualified "It depends". What level is your son intending to study to? If it can help him get on a qualification/course he wants to do, then yes, it is useful. If it was the end result, probably not as useful, from my experience of working in IT it isn't a widely recognised qualification.

Castiel said:
He uses Dreamweaver at home and how much he knows about HTML I cannot say...how could I help him outside of school, with study aids and software etc other than what I have already mentioned (as they have rather large learning curves generally).
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Code Academy. Their HTML and JavaScript tutorials are pretty good. Require a certain degree of literacy though.

Code Academy HTML Tutorials

For CS6 there are plenty of websites out there offering tutorials and his art teachers are probably better positioned to offer help than me if they are digitally inclined. I can use PS and Illustrator a bit, but am no expert. I am a Computing teacher rather than an ICT teacher truth be told.
 
Castiel said:
The school doesn't have a 6th form. This is one of the issues I have, will the CiDA allow him to do the GCE Computing if he wants to, I cant find any information as to whether it would qualify him. The only thing I can see is that he could do a GCE in Media, which is pretty useless I would imagine.
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I would have a look at the local sixth form options and see what their entry requirements are, I know we are strongly suggesting a GCSE in Computing for the GCE but our intake is mostly internal. I don't think CiDA helps much with that pathway as the new GCE Computing is very much programming and web development rather than web design.
 
RDM said:
I am going to have to offer a qualified "It depends". What level is your son intending to study to? If it can help him get on a qualification/course he wants to do, then yes, it is useful. If it was the end result, probably not as useful, from my experience of working in IT it isn't a widely recognised qualification.
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It would simply be an access qualification to more study, ultimately toward something along the lines of Graphic Design, he is rather more creative than me and his talents lie in a more artistic direction.

RDM said:
Code Academy. Their HTML and JavaScript tutorials are pretty good. Require a certain degree of literacy though.

Code Academy HTML Tutorials

For CS6 there are plenty of websites out there offering tutorials and his art teachers are probably better positioned to offer help than me if they are digitally inclined. I can use PS and Illustrator a bit, but am no expert. I am a Computing teacher rather than an ICT teacher truth be told.
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Thanks again. that will be a great help.
 
RDM said:
I would have a look at the local sixth form options and see what their entry requirements are, I know we are strongly suggesting a GCSE in Computing for the GCE but our intake is mostly internal. I don't think CiDA helps much with that pathway as the new GCE Computing is very much programming and web development rather than web design.
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That was my next port of call tomorrow, I'm putting work on the back-burner for the day to do some investigation and see just where the local 6th forms perceive this change and whether the other local schools are doing the same.
 
Castiel said:
That was my next port of call tomorrow, I'm putting work on the back-burner for the day to do some investigation and see just where the local 6th forms perceive this change and whether the other local schools are doing the same.
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To be fair you will probably be OK, this is the "Entry Requirement" blurb from one of the top ten Sixth Form colleges in the country.

We welcome students from all academic backgrounds and none of our courses require you to have a formal IT qualification or experience in any of the software packages we use. No prior knowledge of Information Technology or Computing is required. All you need is the enthusiasm to work and learn in a constantly evolving subject area where there are always new skills to learn and new applications of technology to understand and experience.
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Computing is still a fairly new GCSE so isn't yet seen as compulsory for further study (though obviously it would help).
 
RDM said:
To be fair you will probably be OK, this is the "Entry Requirement" blurb from one of the top ten Sixth Form colleges in the country.

Computing is still a fairly new GCSE so isn't yet seen as compulsory for further study (though obviously it would help).
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Thanks, you have put my mind at rest and thanks for the advice, I appreciate it. :)
 
Hello,

Just some thoughts from me, I've been teaching Computing and ICT for seven years now.

I have taught BTEC ICT and CiDA. Both are much of a muchness, however I preferred teaching the BTEC personally. I find it quite surprising that CiDA is still kicking about, we stopped teaching it around four years ago. In terms of entry to college, both will be fine. Your son may find some of the work he did on the compulsory units in BTEC ICT apply to CiDA as well.

I don't know the answer to this, however there is now a limit on the number of BTEC qualifications a student can take from this year, it may be for school league tables this has caused some of the issue? I'm not 100% on this though and I would trust your school in this case.

In terms of entry to college. These qualifications will be fine. If your son wants to take Computing, it is more important he has a good grade in GCSE Maths and is considering this as an option for A-Level. I have never taught a student at A-Level who has achieved higher than a C who was not doing Maths or Further Maths at A-Level alongside Computing. Just an observation, I'm sure there are individuals out there who have succeeded, but it's not common.

It's a shame your son can't take GCSE Computing, it's a great course and a lot of fun to do.
 
I hate to comment without adding much to answer your question. I do however feel I need to say this.

Should the school not of used common sense and not waited until the end of the term to change to this new system :/

seems some things never change...
 
porushinobu said:
I hate to comment without adding much to answer your question. I do however feel I need to say this.

Should the school not of used common sense and not waited until the end of the term to change to this new system :/

seems some things never change...
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It is the end of the term....however this is the problem, he is half way through his GCSE's and now has to cope with the loss of a years works while while having to fit two years work in another course into one year.
 
Castiel said:
It is the end of the term....however this is the problem, he is half way through his GCSE's and now has to cope with the loss of a years works while while having to fit two years work in another course into one year.
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Ah makes some sense I guess, but they should really let him finish this course while moving only the newbies up instead.
 
TomWilko said:
Hello,


I don't know the answer to this, however there is now a limit on the number of BTEC qualifications a student can take from this year, it may be for school league tables this has caused some of the issue? I'm not 100% on this though and I would trust your school in this case.
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All the non GCSE's a student earns count for them. However for school performance measures, for this year and the next, a maximum of two GCSE equivalents can be counted, the rest have to be GCSE's.

If the school was moving from BTEC ICT to GCSE halfway through the course, this would have been a possible reason. However with them moving from BTEC to CiDA then at least you know they're not secretly doing it for their own benefit!
 
Mirmo said:
All the non GCSE's a student earns count for them. However for school performance measures, for this year and the next, a maximum of two GCSE equivalents can be counted, the rest have to be GCSE's.

If the school was moving from BTEC ICT to GCSE halfway through the course, this would have been a possible reason. However with them moving from BTEC to CiDA then at least you know they're not secretly doing it for their own benefit!
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I am not so sure about that as the main reason for the change is poor performance (apparently nationwide) in the first exams which meant that no-one go the required results to allow anything better than a D equivalent.
 
w3schools is another good website for learning HTML etc, hopefully your son is writing code himself from scratch as it's easy in dreamweaver to drag and drop without having to do anything, although this is what I remember from using it years ago. From what I've seen it has some new features now and should be more useful for writing code yourself.

Also it's good you bought Adobe CS6 package it won't go to waste as again there's plenty of tutorials online especially for Photoshop
 
Don't use W3schools for learning HTML.

Code Academy has a great range of tutorials, and it's what I used to supplement my evening college course in web design. It helped me get a job in web design.
 
Yeah I have used Code Academy as well but I wouldn't rely solely on just tutorials, after getting to grips with the basics you have to test yourself by applying that knowledge into actual projects which you can use to build up a portfolio.
 
I am not a teacher but work within a Scottish school. From what I have seen within the computing department you are at the mercy of whatever software package the teacher is comfortable using.

Schools are always behind because:

  • Cost of new versions of the licensed software will be incredibly expensive (even with Educational discount)
  • Staff would need to re-write their entire course work every year a new version is released.

For example staff are only this year moving across to using Microsoft Office 2010, mainly due to the Windows 7 roll out that has sped up the process because Windows XP is no longer supported.

Office 2010 is newer but still 3 years behind the latest version of MS Office but you also have to remember, if a 1st year pupil started learning on Office 2007 or 2010. Would you be happy that your son was forced to do his exams on the latest version of Office because it was just newly released a few months before?

Quite often the menus and such are in different locations and doing the same task they have been for 3-4 years is suddenly different.

I do feel that teachers need to be faster at adapting though especially when we are still teaching pupils VB6!

Oh and almost forgot to mention, is there no graphic design course within your sons school? Although they don't teach photoshop here (Too expensive) The CDT department use Corel graphics and Corel Paintshop and also Autocad 2013.

So although it's not photoshop, the principals learned on the software will be fundamental to any graphical software package.
 
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