On 10/15/07, Steve Olive <steve@bathurst-tafe.nsw.edu.au> wrote:
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I would like to see this as well, unfortunately government colleges and other training organisations don't get funding or the time to do this. Training today is focused at a "minimum standard of competency" not teaching all of the skills required. As I said it becomes a Catch 22; the majority of organisations use Microsoft Office so these are the skills that are expected when students complete courses.

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I have found that students tend to get enthusiastic about Open Source Software and they are keen to use the software to help their friends reduce the costs and security issues of computing.

It is up to us, the Open Source and Free Software Communities, to encourage the use of qualifications that do not focus on a particular brand of software. I also believe that these qualifications should not be prohibitively priced, preventing students, who are often unemployed, from taking the tests. They are better served spending the money on computers and other hardware for use at home so they can better their skills and find employment.

Is this something the Software Freedom Day should look into? Registering or certifying skills with software promoted on Software Freedom Day.

Sorry, if I have taken this way off topic for the SFD discussion list.

Regards,

Steve

What if we started with schools, encouraged them to switch to OO.org and helped them to do so, and made that a focus of next year's SFD events? I ran an SFD event at a local school this year, and met with the information systems department and some high level staff to explain the benefits of FOSS and suggest they consider a pilot project to test the concept. If we can justify switching the software, the courses will follow suit ( e.g. this school taught IT using VB6 because that was all they had). The knock-on effects of the generic/FOSS skills in young students will result in more people using FOSS instead of proprietary software. Thoughts?