Contents

1. EC Review Meeting
2. SELF Platform Status
3. OpenDoc Society launched: Mare Liberum
4. SELF travels around Sweden
5. SELF in Extremadura
6. Agenda
7. About

1. EC Review Meeting

The SELF organisation has received feedback on the first periodic review meeting held mid-September during an expert review meeting with the European Commission. "The review gave an interesting picture of the project," the reviewer Alexis Monville writes. "The review was served by good quality documents and presentations." He gave assessments on various parts of the project. "The project is going well on its way. The slight delay on the development of the platform (WP6) and on the content development (WP7) is compensated by the anticipation of the dissemination (WP9) and community building (WP10) packages."

The iCommons team made an article about SELF and we are now at their spotlight, see iCommons.org

Thanks to David Jacovkis (Free Knowledge Institute) for the inputs and Thomas Vilhelm (thomasvilhelm.com) for some of the artistic pictures and Daniela Faris (iCommons) for writing the article!

SELF News
Monthly newsletter
Sharing knowledge about Free Software
Issue 12, 28 September 2007

Contents

1. SELF Launch at the UOC
2. New governmental policy on standards receives public support
3. C3 - Knowledge Collaborative Building Mailinglist is now open
4. SELF members at WIPO GA
5. SELF at CaFeCONF- Buenos Aires
6. SELF at European Services, Software and Grid Technology Days
7. Agenda
8. About
   

1. SELF Launch at the UOC

The official launch of SELF at the UOC will take place during the Autumn term meeting on 6th October at the UAB Campus in Bellaterra. This meeting is an opportunity for students, tutors and other members of the university community to come together to discuss face-to-face all kinds of academic issues. There are presentations and conferences, as well as tutorials and workshops. Wouter Tebbens and David Megías will jointly ake the presentation to launch the first version of the SELF platform to the UOC community.

The launch of the SELF Platform and the conference held in Amsterdam were streamed on the internet. The streaming setup was made possible thanks to the collaboration of Jeffrey Snijder of livecast.nl.

The video files below can be downloaded. Due to a temporary issue, viewing in your browser might not work; once you've downloaded them onto your computer, you can open them in your favourite video viewer.

Download recorded videos:

• Opening by Arjen Kamphuis

Free courses and a professional environment for teachers

A milestone for education on Free Software and Open Standards has been reached. On September 5th 2007 the beta version of the SELF Platform goes live. The official launch is taking place during a conference on Free Software in Education in the Netherlands, accompanied by satellite launch events in Sweden, Bulgaria, Argentina, Mexico and India with workshops and conferences.

The SELF Platform has been developed by a global team of non-profit organisations, universities and volunteers engaged in the SELF Project, an initiative for the collaborative sharing and creation of free educational and training materials on Free Software and Open Standards. Users, primarily learners and teachers, are enabled to assemble selections of learning contents and create custom-made learning material for lessons in their language. The Platform is launched in beta stage to involve the growing community in optimising the tool.

Contents

Since its kick-off in July 2006 several important parts towards the realisation of the Platform have been researched and put into practice. This SELF News Edition outlines the progress in each area.

For information about the official launch of the first version of the Platform on September 5, 2007, please go to http://selfproject.eu/launch !

1. Learning Materials
2. Learning Standards
3. Legal Policy
4. SELF Platform Definition
5. Quality Assessment
6. Community Building
7. Organisational Strengthening
8. Agenda
9. About

1. Learning Materials

An important element of the SELF Project is research on available materials and detection of potential gaps. During the search of educational materials on Free Software and Open Standards, hundreds of freely available materials were inspected and classified into different categories and subcategories. This work had a primary value, detecting resources suitable for their inclusion in the SELF Platform after the necessary modifications. As a side effect and added value, the results of the search allowed the identification of dark spots, areas where the coverage of materials published under free licenses is poor or clearly insufficient. Those areas are the main gaps that will be considered for further research of available materials and eventually for the production of new materials inside the SELF Project. In all cases, reported gaps are accompanied with recommendations and guidelines to be considered later during a further search of available materials and the development of new materials inside the SELF Platform.

The SELF Platform will be launched worldwide!

The official launch of the first version of the SELF Platform will take place on September 5th, 2007, initially from The Netherlands. The Platform will be launched in an early stage to involve early users and allow for their input. The launch will take place during a conference on Free Software in education and the day will consist of keynote speakers and panel discussions. Simultaneously several satellite events to the launch in The Netherlands are planned in Sweden, Bulgaria, Argentina and Mexico with workshops and conferences. India will follow on September 7th, 2007, and Spain on October 6th, 2007.