Contents

1. European Commission Concertation Meeting
2. Belgium Tour
3. Development of didactic standards and guidelines
4. Analysis of available contents and important gaps
5. towards Open Source Software adoption and dissemination (tOSSad)
6. Administrative mailinglist notice
7. Agenda
8. About

1. European Commission Concertation Meeting

The EC's Software and Services department organised a concertation eeting to get to know the other projects and stimulate an exchange of ideas. They were proud to tell that they are investing 168 million Euro in their portfolio of projects, of which several projects in the field of Free Software.

A few interesting projects worth mentioning: the EDOS project which provides for Quality Assurance tools for Free Software distributions, the NEPOMUK project that s developing a Social Semantic Desktop, and the QUALOSS project that will develop a quality benchmark framework for comparing Free Software projects.

Contribution by Wouter Tebbens, ISOC.nl

2. Belgium Tour

Cees Segers (ISOC.nl Board member and trainmaker at Avans Hogeschool in the Netherlands) and Wouter Tebbens conducted a small tour through Belgium to present the SELF project. Belgium is in the process of implementing the OpenDocument standard, thereby freeing the way for a fair choice between office tools. Says Federal ICT manager Peter Strickx: "We only require read (2007) and write (2008) capabilities of the federal institutions, then every department is free to choose between MS Office, OpenOffice.org or other office suites, as long as they implement ODF completely". Several government institutions have already started using OpenOffice.org. More on Belgium Open Standards

The Free University of Brussels showed serious interest in the SELF project. Where many organisations suffer from internal support departments that don't support Free Software projects yet, the VUB has its own in-house support department for GNU/Linux and Free Software applications, run by students. More.

And the Flanders government is developing an Ubuntu course (open content of course) for its citizens. When it's out we'll present it to you through the SELF Platform!

Contribution by Wouter Tebbens, ISOC.nl

3. Development of didactic standards and guidelines

Didactic standards and guidelines for the contents of the SELF Platform provide a common basis for the design of educational materials. They define common goals and structures for different kinds of educational materials.

We have analysed different formats in the following categories: Plain text, Formatted text, Scientific text, Vector images, Bitmap images, Printed-oriented, Hypertext, Presentations, Audio and Video. For each of these categories we have analysed several formats according to five criteria:

• whether the format has a public specification,
• if it is subject to patent claims,
• if it is recommeded by any standardisation organism,
• if it is implemented by any free software application, and
• if it is a de facto or de iure standard.

This overview can help us determine which format standards will be supported by the SELF platform.

In addition, there is a preliminary list of candidates to constitute the Didactic Expert Group (DEG). Five different candidates have been suggested and will most likely be invited to become members of the DEG.

Finally, we are preparing a short report of three different didactic standards which could be used for the internal format of the SELF matarials, namely, Learning Object Metadata (LOM), Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) and IMS Learning Design (IMS LD). It must be determined whether SELF will support all of them or if one will be chosen.

Contribution by David Megias, UOC

4. Analysis of available contents and important gaps

Free educational materials have been searched and identified. We have classified materials free software applications in different categories and subcategories which are currently being discussed at the Wiki of the SELF project. The task of finding published materials of applications of free software with free licenses has finished and more than 100 materials have been reported. The work will shortly conclude with the definitive classification of the materials in the categories.

In addition, each partner has suggested a list of interested third parties which will be contacted in order to disseminate the SELF activities. This list consists of different organisations classified by country and area (Government, Educational institutes, Industry and Free Software communities).

Finally, we are analysing which applications are not included in the available materials and, thus, SELF will also be devoted to producing contents about them. This "gap analysis" is under discussion at the project eGW site.

Contribution by David Megias, UOC

5. towards Open Source Software adoption and dissemination (tOSSad)

Another project on improving the outcomes of Free Software communities by creating sufficient momentum for a general acceptance and coordinated boost of Free Software development is tOSSad: "towards Open Source Software adoption and dissemination". tOSSad is a project funded by the European Commission under Information Society Technologies 3.

The main objective of the tOSSad project is to start integrating and exploiting already formed methodologies, strategies, skills and technologies in the Free Software domain in order to help governmental bodies, educational institutions and SMEs to share research results, establish synergies, build partnerships and innovate in an enlarged Europe.

More precisely, the tOSSad project aims at improving the outcomes of the Free Software communities throughout Europe through supporting the coordination and networking of these communities by means of state-of-the-art studies, national program initiations, usability cases, curriculum development and implementation of collaborative information portal and web based groupware. More information

Contribution by Dragoslava Pefeva, ISOC.bg

6. Administrative mailinglist notice

Although it is SELF's policy to subscribe people to any mailing list only upon their explicit request, we will start a new mailinglist for SELF: "Announce-l". The SELF Announce list will replace the Events list, is moderated and intended for official SELF announces and the SELF News, a monthly newsletter about the SELF Project and related issues. The frequency is initially low. There is also a separate unmoderated list called "Self-l" intended for discussion and input among everybody interested in the SELF Project.

Next week we will move this mailing list to a new server and use the domain selfproject.eu for all our lists. We will be taking this opportunity to move everybody over from the old Events list and the general list to SELF Announce (a one-time reset). We will not make any changes to the Self-l discussion list.

7. Agenda

• 11 October 2006, 14:00 - ca. 14:45 - Free Software Masterclass with Georg Greve, FSFE
• 11 October 2006, 14:45 - 15:15 - Presentation of the SELF Project by Wouter Tebbens, ISOC.nl

VI Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre
13-15 October 2006, Mendoza, Argentina
The VI Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre are a wandering yearly event, which serves as a gathering point for many free software developers in the South Cone.

The Role of Open Source Policy for the Development of Information Society
30 October - 1 November 2006, Yerevan, Armenia

• 1 november 2006 - Presentation of the SELF Project by Julia Velkova, ISOC.bg

First International Annual Meeting of the Fellows of FSFE
11 November 2006, Bolzano, Italy

8. About

SELF News is a monthly newsletter about the SELF Project and related issues. SELF aims to be the central place where people can share quality educational and training materials about Free Software and Open Standards, based on a world-class technological platform and in collaboration with global communities.

Information about SELF:
http://selfproject.eu/

Consortium Partners:

• Internet Society Netherlands (ISOC.nl)
• Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
• Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)
• Gothenburg University (GU)
• Internet Society Bulgaria (ISOC.bg)
• Fundación Vía Libre (FVL)
• Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE)

Newsletter editor:
Hinde ten Berge