Twitter service for exam candidates

Twitter service for exam candidates

Candidates in this year’s NCEA and Scholarship senior secondary school exams can sign up to receive reminders and updates from NZQA through the social networking site, Twitter.

Around 140,000 students will be involved with exams from November 14 to December 4, 2009.

Twitter messaging is being added to existing communications methods (via the NZQA website, schools and news media), and will allow reminders of exam times and exam rules, and alerts about issues such as localised traffic problems, to be passed on quickly to candidates.

Messages will be sent in plain English, not text language, and will not be sent during exam sessions, NZQA deputy chief executive, Qualifications, Bali Haque said. Candidates will not be able to send messages to NZQA via Twitter.

“We’d like candidates to be as prepared as possible before exams. We want to remind candidates of exam times and adding Twitter to our communications options will also be useful if we need to alert candidates in particular areas of issues such as traffic congestion.

“There is a certain irony that one of the regular messages we will be sending to candidates via their cellphones is that they should turn the phones off and leave them outside exams,” Mr Haque said.

Students wanting to receive messages must first sign up as followers of NCEAexams, at: www.twitter.com

Information on exam rules is available at: http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/ncea/acrp/secondary/index.html

ENDS

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