The term "Digital Natives" is often rolled out when young people and technology are being discussed. The government is keen to encourage exam boards and curriculum designers to consolidate young people's existing skills and develop new ones for the future. Two relatively new qualifications that capture this trend are the British Computer Society's "Digital Cre8or" and OCR's iMedia.
The Digital Cre8or award is the brain-child of Apple Distinguished Educator, David Baugh. The course is a Level 2 qualification with 8 units to the value of a Grade B at GCSE (46 school performance points). The course is split into 5 Creative units and 3 Sharing units. The course content and mark schemes are all housed within a VLE so that work can be created at school or at home. The syllabus content is downloadable in the form of videos, podcasts, and PDF files. All of the resources required to deliver the course are already created.
The iLife software suite is perfectly suited to the delivery of Digital Cre8or.
Creating
Unit 1 Digital Audio (GarageBand, Quicktime, iTunes)
Unit 2 Digital Still Images ( iPhoto and Keynote)
Unit 3 Moving Image Language (Quicktimeplayer)
Unit 4 Digital Video (iMovie)
Unit 5 Story Telling with Animation (iStop Motion/I Can Animate, iMovie, Garageband)
Sharing
Unit 6 Sharing with optical media (IDVD/Keynote)
Unit 7 Sharing on the internet (iWeb/school VLE or any free on-line publishing service)
Unit 8 Sharing using Multimedia presentations (Keynote, Open Office)
Train the Trainer Courses for teachers and classroom assistants are being run regionally. The organisers can be contacted via the Learning Central website (http://www.learning-central.org/Learning-Central-Home.html)
OCR's iMedia almost sounds like an Apple product, but offers a comprehensive stepping stone approach to digital creativity and game design offering Levels 1, 2 and 3. Each unit has an explore, plan, create, review approach and requires about 30 guided learning hours per unit (Level 2). OCR say that this is the fastest growing course in the portfolio. As with Digital Cre8or the course is 100% on-line portfolio based. The course offers a range of creative units that reflect creative industry practices, including the creation of computer games. A centre can choose 4 units (with Unit 1 being compulsory) and the value is the same as a Grade B at GCSE.
Unit 1 Digital Graphics (iPhoto- Photoshop/Elements)
Unit 2 Web Authoring (iWeb Dreamweaver)
Unit 3 Digital Animation (Flash, iStop Motion/I Can Animate)
Unit 4 Interactive Multimedia Concepts (Flash/Keynote/Powerpoint/Open Office)
Unit 5 Digital Sound (GarageBand)
Unit 6 Digital Video (iMovie)
Unit 7 2D Games Engines (Stage Cast) or Mission Maker (via Bootcamp)
Unit 8 Game Design (Photoshop/Text)
More information on iMedia can be found at www.imedia.ocr.org.uk
