SELF (an acronym for “Science, Education and Learning in Freedom”) is an international project aiming to provide a platform for the collaborative sharing and creation of free educational and training materials on Free Software and Open Standards. Learning standards and guidelines for the contents of the SELF Platform provide a common basis for the design of educational materials. The Learning Standards Expert Group (LSEG) has been constituted in order to help define the learning standards and guidelines for the contents of the platform.

The SELF Platform is a repository with free educational and training materials on Free Software and Open Standards and an environment for the collaborative creation of new materials. Inspired by Wikipedia, the SELF Platform provides the materials in different languages and forms. The SELF Platform is also an instrument for evaluation, adaptation, creation and translation of these materials. Most importantly, the SELF Platform is a tool to unite community and professional efforts for public benefit.

SELF Consortium partner Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Spain) has researched digital format candidates to be used in the SELF Platform. While the SELF Platform collects content in an open standard it also follows didactic standards for its own operation. This ensures that all the content collected into the platform, as well as what gets distributed from it will confirm to the widely used open standards.

The Learning Standards Expert Group will advice, provide feedback and test demonstrating versions and the final version of the SELF Platform, emphasising the implementation of the learning standards. They define common goals and structures for different kinds of educational materials. This group is formed by experts in the field of Learning Objects (LOM, SCORM and/or IMS-LD) to give advice in the definition of the information used to label the SELF contents and to create the structure of the SELF repository. The Expert Group, led by David Megias, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, consists of:

Ken Wasch held a convincing presentation of the worldwide adoption of ODF. Criticism about accessibility problems has been heard recently in the press, but the latest update of the ODF format presents the needed features.

A freely accessible knowledge web will facilitate education in the digital age

The Hague, The Netherlands, 30 June 2006

A financial contribution of one million euro from Brussels for a not-for-profit consortium lead by ISOC.nl will open the market for education and training material. High quality education material will be available for free through internet for end users, companies and institutions.

The SELF Consortium organizes a conference day in The Hague, The Netherlands, packed with interesting speakers and discussion panels. Politicians, policymakers, education specialists from schools and universities and training organisations are present to celebrate the start of the SELF project.

See here for the complete program: http://isoc.nl/self/kickoff/