{"id":1811,"date":"2016-03-31T13:10:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-31T12:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/?p=1811"},"modified":"2016-03-31T13:34:03","modified_gmt":"2016-03-31T12:34:03","slug":"learner-guides-for-digital-literacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/learner-guides-for-digital-literacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Learner guides for digital literacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I attended the launch of SQA&#8217;s new learner guides for digital literacy yesterday, which was held in the Wheatley Group offices in Glasgow. Some time ago, SQA signed up to the Scottish Government&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gov.scot\/Topics\/Economy\/digital\/Digital-Participation\/Charter\/Revised-Charter\">Digital Participation Charter<\/a> and, as part of that initiative, we pledged to produce a range of learner guides to cover basic skills in computing. The guides are now <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqaacademy.org.uk\/course\/view.php?id=651\">available<\/a>. There are\u00a019 guides in total, covering such things as applying for a job, buying a train ticket, and shopping online. The guides\u00a0are designed for the absolute beginner.<\/p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/Learner-guide-launch.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1814\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1814\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/Learner-guide-launch-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"Learner guide launch\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/Learner-guide-launch-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/Learner-guide-launch-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/Learner-guide-launch-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/Learner-guide-launch-600x338.jpg 600w, https:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/Learner-guide-launch.jpg 1560w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>\n<p>Almost one of five (18%) of people in Scotland don&#8217;t have access to the Internet. These people are generally older (over 55), poorer and live in social housing. Lacking Internet skills makes their problems worse and leads to &#8220;digital exclusion&#8221;. Ninety percent of jobs, today, require (at the very least) basic digital skills.<\/p>\n<p>These short\u00a0courses are not certificated (although learners can aim for an SQA digital badge if they wish) but there are lots of qualifications that can be taken after completing this training\u00a0such as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqa.org.uk\/files\/nu\/H3LJ09.pdf\">Computer Basics\u00a0<\/a>or the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqa.org.uk\/sqa\/27604.html\">NPA in Digital Literacy<\/a>\u00a0or the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqa.org.uk\/sqa\/74863.html\">Digital Passport<\/a> suite of awards.<\/p>\n<p>Scotland has two digital skills problems &#8211; at the two\u00a0extremes of the spectrum. We have too many people lacking basic digital skills and too few people with software development skills. We hope that this initiative helps the former and our new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqa.org.uk\/sqa\/76243.html\">PDA in Software Development<\/a>\u00a0will help\u00a0with the latter.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"mailto:liz.sinclair@sqa.org.uk\">Contact Liz<\/a> for more information about the guides, <a href=\"mailto:emma.campos@sqa.org.uk\">contact Emma<\/a> about qualifications in basic skills and <a href=\"mailto:helen.zhang@sqa.org.uk\">contact Helen<\/a> for more information about advanced qualifications. <a href=\"mailto:hilary.weir@sqa.org.uk\">Contact Hilary<\/a> if you want to know more about SQA&#8217;s digital literacy initiative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I attended the launch of SQA&#8217;s new learner guides for digital literacy yesterday, which was held in the Wheatley Group offices in Glasgow. Some time ago, SQA signed up to the Scottish Government&#8217;s Digital Participation Charter and, as part of that initiative, we pledged to produce a range of learner guides to cover basic skills in computing. The guides are now available. There are\u00a019 guides in total, covering such things as applying for a job, buying a train ticket, and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1811"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1817,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions\/1817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sqa.org.uk\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}