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.

Hundreds of documents on Free Software, such as OpenOffice.org, The Gimp, or GNU/Linux, and documents on Open Standards have been screened by a team of experts in regards to quality, free license and validity. The result is a basic collection of high-quality learning materials that have been, or will be atomised and entered into the SELF Platform. Inspired by Wikipedia, the multilingual SELF Platform is not only a self-sustaining source of knowledge and a tool to evaluate, adapt, create and translate free learning materials on Free Software, but also creates a much needed room for interaction between the Free Software and the education communities in a broader sense.

The SELF Project is carried by a consortium of non-profit organisations and universities in Europe, Asia and Latin America. The initial setup of the Platform has been financially supported by the European Union.