SELF News
Monthly newsletter
Sharing knowledge about Free Software
Issue 16, 28 January 2008

Contents

1. Free Knowledge, Free Technology Conference
2. SELF Open Documentary Contest
3. Fourth SELF Board Meeting
4. SELF Conference in Sofia, Bulgaria
5. New materials in Atutor
6. SELF at foss.in
7. About

1. Free Knowledge, Free Technology Conference

Education for a free information society

The Free Knowledge, Free Technology Conference (FKFT) is the first international event which will centre on the production and sharing of educational and training materials in the field of Free Software and Open Standards. With the objective of promoting Free Software and the sharing of free knowledge, the FKFT 2008 Conference will bring together hundreds of people from different continents including government representatives, school and university teachers, IT companies, publishers, and NGO's. By gathering together people from all these groups, we aim to stimulate both present and future collaboration between diverse disciplines, sectors and countries, through the medium of free software programs and the sharing of successful experiences related to free software and free technologies.

The Free Knowledge Institute and the SELF Consortium will collaborate to organise the content of the conference and to build strong relationships between attendees. The programme consists of an elegant mix between keynote speakers, panel discussions and parallel tracks on topics such as Social implications of Free Knowledge and Free Technologies, Technological aspects of e-learning, Learning Standards, Free Software in society, Legal issues of Free Knowledge, Free Knowledge in public bodies, Introducing the SELF Platform, and many more. During the social evening the Award Ceremony of the SELF Open Documentary Contest will take place.

Registration is now open! The deadline for early registration rates is April 1, 2008. Please register here

More information

2. SELF Open Documentary Contest

The SELF Project is pleased to announce The SELF Open Documentary Contest. Create a documentary about the creation of free knowledge and education in the digital era! Get your friends together, encourage your company to participate, or just let your own creativity flow freely.

We invite you to participate in our work by actively engaging in the SELF Open Documentary Contest. The documentaries will be screened at the Free Knowledge, Free Technology (FKFT) conference in Barcelona, taking place the 15th-17th July 2008 and the best documentaries selected by an active jury will be presented at an award ceremony during the conference.

You can find more information about the SELF Project and the contest on the contest website, where you will also find some useful background information, the exact guidelines and evaluation process as well as the submission procedures!

More information

3. Fourth SELF Board Meeting

The SELF Board is preparing for its fourth meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria. The meeting will gather the consortium members from each partnering organisation in order to focus on the specific issues within the SELF Project and its development. The working agenda of the Board meeting includes brainstorm working on the technical development SELF Platform; quality assurance issues, learning materials; organisation of the Free Knowledge Free Technology Conference in July in Barcelona; the future of the SELF platform; and the newly announced SELF Open Documentary Contest. As part of the Board meeting, SELF is organising an international conference with the kind support of the the French Cultural Institute in Bulgaria and Linux for Bulgarians.

Contribution by Dessi Pefeva, ISOC.bg

4. SELF Conference in Sofia, Bulgaria

Internet Society Bulgaria, the French Cultural Institute, Linux for Bulgarians and the SELF Project are organising an international conference in Sofia on "Science, Education and Learning in Freedom" with a focus on free educational materials about Free Software and Open Standards. The conference will be held on February 10th, 2008, at the French Cultural Institute in Sofia, 2 Dyakon Ignatij Str., Sofia, Bulgaria.

The main objective of the conference is to provide the representatives of educational institutes, as well as the Free Software community in Bulgaria with information on the SELF Project, its benefits and how they could use its resources in the best manner. The SELF Platform will be presented and its key-functionalities will be demonstrated in front of representatives from different educational institutions in Bulgaria.

In the second part of the conference a dialogue with representatives of the state administration will be conducted. The main focus of the dialogue are the issues related to the usage of Free Software in the state administration -- a dialogue, which already has been initiated in December 2007 by the Minister of State Administration and Administrative Reform Mr. Nikolay Vassilev.

Speakers on the conference will be, amongst others, Wouter Tebbens (ISOC.nl), Jonas Oberg (FSFE / UGOT), Federico Heinz (FVL) and David Megias (UOC). SELF also invited a prominent volunteer within the SELF Platform - Vedran Vucuc from GnuLinux Centar Serbia, who will share his experience with Atutor and will explain how the SELF Platform can be used to export from there to Atutor and to use it in virtual classrooms.

Contribution by Dessi Pefeva, ISOC.bg

5. New materials in Atutor

At the UOC Hannah Margrett has been very busy moving a lot of materials from the UOC Masters in Free Software course to Atutor, ready for their migration to the SELF platform. Here are the details of those materials:

• Advanced Administration of GNU/Linux (in Catalan and Spanish)
• Advanced Development Concepts in Free Software (in Catalan and Spanish)
• Development of Web Applications (in Catalan and Spanish)
• Program Engineering in Free Software Environments (in Catalan and Spanish)
• Introduction to Development of the Software (in Catalan and Spanish)
• Free Software: Utilities and Tools (in Catalan and Spanish)

These materials are currently being translated into English, and once available, will be moved to Atutor in their English form as well.

Contribution by Hannah Margrett, UOC

6. SELF at foss.in

A workshop on SELF Platform was conducted at the foss.in event at Bangalore, India. During this event, SELF board member Nagarjuna G. informed the community about the SELF Project, gave a demonstration of creating/authoring courses in the SELF Platform, and invited the community to develop top quality documents for facilitating on-line learning about Free Software and Open Standards. The audience consisted mainly from developers from India and additionally developers from international countries. As an outcome of the workshop, a teacher fellow has been appointed at Homi Bhabha Centre For Science Education to work on the SELF Platform for testing and creating content.

Mr. Nagarjuna G explained that the SELF Platform is an international project currently supported by the European Commission, and collaboratively developed by teams around the world to fill a major gap in the Free Software support process, namely systematic training. One of the most important functions of the SELF Platform is to facilitate collaborative course development in an on-line environment. It is an author-centric platform for developing learner-centric content. While translating the high level specifications of the platform into an implementable design, one of the main factors kept in mind is to keep the authors in the centre of the platform and to think around them. The SELF Platform is like a stage, on which the main actors are authors, and they together collaboratively create courses.

Contribution by Meena Kharatmal, HBCSE

7. About

SELF News is a monthly newsletter about the SELF Project and related issues. SELF aims to be the central platform with high quality educational and training materials about Free Software and Open Standards. It is based on world-class Free Software technologies that permit both reading and publishing free materials, and is driven by a worldwide community.

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

Consortium Partners:

• Internet Society Netherlands
• Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
• Free Software Foundation Europe
• Goteburg University
• Internet Society Bulgaria
• Fundación Vía Libre
• Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education
  

Newsletter editor:
Hinde ten Berge

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