This amazing Boston Dynamics tech demo has being widely shared. A light-hearted antidote to the what for many has been an annus horribilis. But… when Hyundai bought this tech in 2020, did anyone check if they also changed their name to Cyberdyne Systems?

God of War - Santa Monica Studios
🎮 #microreview

Kinda-open world romp through norse mythology and parenthood from the perspective of a Greek God. Lots of lore and humour courtesy of Mimir. Recommended.

The last of “three semi-literate Scots taking an irreverent look at their country’s institutions” shifts off this mortal coil. Thanks fur aathing.

Aberdeen comedy hero Buff Hardie, the last of the Scotland the What? trio, dies aged 89 - Press and Journal

Movember. After. Donate.

“There are some things we don’t want to know. Important things.”

– Ned Flanders, The Simpsons

Ned doesn’t want to know about men’s health. Don’t be like Ned.

Netflix have knocked it out the park with The Queen’s Gambit. How long must we now wait for the wave of young chess talent to surface in the aftermath?

1. d4 d5
2. c4

Movember. During. Donate.

The Scottish Qualification Authority, our nation’s government-sponsored examination and qualification body, run the vast majority of exams in almost all of Scotland’s schools. That significant governmental bond brings with it both the funding and accountability necessary for its operation, but also results in unwanted brushes with party politics. This makes it difficult for those of us outside the system to know what drives decisions and why.

And 2020 has been a year for decisions.

The SQA’s “gold standard”¹ qualification, the Higher, is the unit of currency in university applications, with Advanced Higher being a level up broadly equivalent to A-Levels. But the National 5, our nation’s GCSE if you ike, remains a benchmark qualification for many school leavers.

A Brief History of the 2020 SQA Exams

Whatever your views on the springtime national lockdown in response to COVID-19 - whether measures went far enough and were implemented soon enough, or went too far or for too long - one of the casualties was the 2020 diet of exams delivered by the SQA.

Instead certification was to based on teacher estimates and statistically moderated by the SQA, but was ultimately rolled back to teacher estimates based on public and media outrage and significant political pressure.

2021 SQA National 5 Exams Cancelled

On the back of the 2020 results climb down Professor Mark Priestley, of Stirling University, was asked to carry out an independent review of the events and decisions which led us to that point, and make recommendations for the session ahead. The published report recommended the cancellation of National 5 exams in 2021 as well as the “development of a nationally recognised, fully transparent and proportionate system for moderation of centre-based assessment” - details of which are still to be published.

Our Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, went all in on these recommendations:

“Given the real risk of further disruption to education, it would not be sensible or fair to plan for a full exam diet in 2021. Coronavirus has not gone away. If anything, it is making a comeback.”

– John Swinney, parliamentary statement, 7 October 2020

So, to be absolutely clear, “it would not be sensible or fair to plan for a full exam diet”. The National 5 exams were cancelled and are be replaced by a moderated teacher-derived estimates similar to the 2020 exams, while Higher and Advanced Higher qualifications will continue with amendments made to content, question papers, and/or assignments in almost all subjects.²

Whether you agree with the approach or not, the logic is easily followed. Reduce the load on the SQA, schools (and other centres), and all of our students. It allows schools take stock of the difficulties of recent months and also cope with what what, at the very least, is an uncertain future regarding possible future lockdowns and absences - of both students and staff. It lowers the stress on students, who have a growing uncertainly about what qualifications they might eventually leave school with or how they might best prepare for future Highers. It supports teachers around the country who are having to adapt to significantly different work patterns and demands, come what may.

The lockdown experience of students varied widely around the country. Some schools were able to lean heavily on technology already deployed and developed, while others were scrambling to keep up. Many schools ran “live” lessons or provided vital pastoral support with suddenly essential tools of the pandemic: Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom. Some were fortunate enough to have a near-normal “attendance” rate.

But the anecdote is strong in this story. From hearing from friends who are also parents, many of their children got assigned as little as one hour of unsupervised work each week while school buildings were closed. And those that are teachers report as little as 10% of their classes engaged with any activity throughout lockdown.

Schools faced different challenges during lockdown, and no one solution will address all of the arising issues. Time to identify and react to their own local problems is arguably vital for each school’s community. And that is before we consider what the next six months will bring?

2021 SQA National 5 Exams - Cancelled?

However, when the SQA started publishing their guidance, the warning bells began ringing.

In the generic guidance for generating estimates republished for this session, the SQA have this to say about prelim exams:

Prelims or mock exams: These are likely to be the most reliable indicator of performance in a question paper, particularly if they are undertaken in the same conditions as the question paper. The most convincing examples of these will accurately predict attainment in the skills, knowledge, and understanding assessed by the question paper. They will be clearly aligned to the course specification, content, and level of demand as exemplified in the specimen question papers and past papers.

This is supported by clear statements in the subject-specific guidance which followed. In English:

You can generate the most valid evidence for question paper components using assessment instruments which replicate, as far as possible, the standard, duration, format and security of SQA question papers.

In Maths:

The closer the internal evidence is to the standard, format and duration of the course assessment, the more reliable it should be.

And in both:

Evidence should be gathered later in the course, as a realistic reflection of a candidate’s attainment.

So, are we to take from this guidance that to best provide the most reliable estimates for the cancelled exams that we would be best to provide an assessment as close to the end of the course as possible, which mimics the content and structure as closely as possible?

What makes this all the more frustrating is that the SQA’s National Qualifications 2021 Group published an update this week stating:

Given current public health advice and to maximise learning and teaching time, it is important to stress that there is no expectation that schools and colleges hold a formal diet of prelims for National 5. One of the key reasons for moving to an alternative model was to create additional teaching time through removing the need for prelims and replacing the final examination diet with more flexible classroom-based assessment.

The rhetoric tells us that schools have been freed from the constraints of a National 5 examination diet which will allow teachers and students to recover from significant disruption to schools, and to cope with the uncertainty of the coming months. The devil in the detail is that schools have been strongly encouraged to implement an internal National 5 examination diet to provide estimates for these very same qualifications.

The difficulty is that this is almost certainly going to be more work for teachers, and adds even greater uncertainty for all students currently enrolled in National 5 courses.

Good luck, America. 🇺🇸

Today I did yoga. Yup. There. I said it.

“We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better, than he was. Better, stronger, faster.”

– Oscar Goldman, “The Six Million Dollar Man”

It’s been a little over ten months since I was last knocked out with a chest infection.

School had broken up for our Christmas holiday. A bunch of us had taken part in an ‘come and sing’ of Handel’s Messiah - to celebrate the retirement of our Rector of over a decade. I am not sure if the piece was picked due to it’s popularity or the implied relevance of the title. Either way. A romp was had.

I don’t know if patient zero was a colleague or a pupil at school, or perhaps a parent. It could be that the source was actually sharing the lung capacities of my fellow choristers, or perhaps a chance encounter on my limited travels of the preceding days. Or maybe it was me.

Whatever the case, the Winter Solstice was the very next day, and the start of it. Holidays were over before they truly began.

As our planet hurtles around that great ball of fire in the sky towards another solstice, one year on, I have only been in work for 39 days. Now, in the strangest of years that is perhaps not that unusual. After all, schools were closed here from March until August anyway. But I have been working from home since a little before lockdown, and now well beyond.

In these last 315 days I have successfully neglected many things. With some gusto, but without intent. I had enough to do most days just keeping on top of work and keeping awake. I have had waves of energy which has allowed to me do a little bit of exercise and a little bit of gardening. These bouts of enthusiasm have come and gone like the tides - well, without the water, or the predictability.¹

Most frustratingly, I have lacked the mental acuity to think. This has brought the blessing of allowing me to give up on being any kind of completionist. But the reading has suffered, as has the odd side project like working through the #100DaysOfSwiftUI. Replaced by such intellectual pursuits as watching the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe in chronological order. I do not recommend it.

I have struggled with extreme physical and mental fatigue. And while I have now been at the point, two or three times, when I feel there is a light at the end of the current tunnel; every time it has turned out to be a train coming in the other direction. Wile E. Coyote and me, we have a connection.

So there is another light. I am beginning to sense some activity in my grey matter. I have actually been reading books again. I started with the familiarity of Frank Herbert’s Dune, a nostalgic journey to past times prompted by the upcoming movie release. I have thoughts, but perhaps that’s a whole other story or two. And now I am on Jackie Kay’s Red Dust Road inspired by our new Rector’s² Summer Book Challenge - I am finally catching up, with the challenge and with my ability to consume text.

And with signs of life showing in the ageing corpse-to-be that has been conscripted into carrying my grey matter around, I have signed up for the extended free trial of The Sufferfest in order to give their Transition Up training plan a go. Optimism? Perhaps? But without optimism, what do we have?

Here’s to the end of fatigue.

Movember. Before. Donate.

Ghost of Tsushima - Sucker Punch Productions
🎮 #microreview

Beautiful open-world drama set in feudal Japan in the face of a Mongol invasion. Minimal HUD allows the environmental detail to shine. Sublime wind-based navigation system. Highly recommended.

Death Stranding - Kojima Productions
🎮 #microreview

Easy-paced action adventure set in a beautifully crafted post-apocolyptic USA. The novel and captivating storyline is driven by a full movie’s worth of cut scenes. Recommended.

Given the riot shield has become an increasingly standard item of policing equipment, and how often they are deployed, can we just call this irony?

“Shields are an indicator that someone plans to fight not disperse.”

– Portland Police, via Twitter

Day 77 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: always polishing

I ticked every box. Challenge complete. Not my finest work.

No CoreData (which was optional, but I should have made the effort). Needs significant UI polish.

Day 76 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: always awake

When sleep escapes you so you decide to knock off a couple of the 100 days, and one of the challenges for ’today’ is to go back and work on the sleep-suggestive BetterRest app…

Day 75 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: can we fix it?

Overheard today, in a setting particularly lacking in any form of jet propulsion: “It really is rocket science.”

Nope. Just like implementing accessibility in your SwiftUI apps. Objectively not rocket science. 🚀 🤔

Day 74 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: open arms

Delighted to see @twostraws include accessibility information in the core of this course.

Apple generally do a great job of providing an accessible platform, and the least developers can do is make sure their software is inclusive!

Day 73 of #100DaysOfSwiftUI: always cutting corners

Breaking: I didn’t complete this by the time WWDC started!

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” — Douglas Adams

Amazing collection of videos on learning to program with Swift Playgrounds - presented by Sahana, aged 7.

— Swift with Sahana on YouTube.