[SFD-discuss] FLOSS educational programmes

[draicone at gmail.com]

On 10/13/07, xolani Ndlovu <xolanimart at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> hie eveyone
> >
> > are there any educational programmes that teach computing short courses
> > using FLOSS products ,programmes like ICDL and others?if not,
> > OpenSourceBulawayo and others are going to be working on a parallel or
> > alternative  educational programme to ICDL that will teach  short computer
> > courses using FLOSS products only since ICDL and other short cources in
> > ZIMBABWE are only taught using Microsoft products only.As we
> > were discussing on how we can get companies and institutions to use Floss
> > we realized that companies send their employees to do ICDL so that  they can
> > use computers at their work places.
> > so with  programmes like these compinies can switch and get their people
> > to do the programmes.if there are such programmes please let me now so
> > that we save time work on getting them done in zimbabwe too.One of the
> > pioneers (KUDAKWASHE ) of FLOSS in Zimbabwe has set a framework on the
> > programme equivalent to ICDL it goes like this: In the meantime, I
> > hereby volunteer to host the wiki on FLOSS-based
> > ICDL
> > course material here:
> >
> >
> > http://www.rukanda.com/wiki/index.php?title=International_Computer_Driving_License_%28ICDL%29on_Free/Libre_Open_Sourse_Software_%28FLOSS%29
> >
> <snip>
> >
>
This is all very well, but in the spirit of FOSS, should the use of any
particular software package, FOSS or non-FOSS, be even considered? The
nature of FOSS pretty much asks for forks, derivatives and alternatives, and
any such courses should teach students how to use software packages for a
particular purpose, not how to use a particular package. Is this education
or training?

Especially with the volatile nature of specific FOSS projects (what ever
happened to Nvu?), restricting learning to a particular application may
leave people with redundant expertise. SFDers should think about encouraging
educational institutions to teach generic skills using FOSS, e.g. word
processing taught on OO.org, instead of specifically Microsoft Word.
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