[edu-eu] Free Technology Academy: Website and course descriptions published

[Franco Iacomella]

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FTA Announcement #2: Website and course descriptions published
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1. Free Technology Academy website launched!

The Free Technology Academy (FTA) is proud to announce the official
launch of its website. It's available at http://www.ftacademy.org. There
you will find all the information related with the project, including news,
next activities, press resources and many more. All the contents are
released under a free Copyleft license, so feel free to share and reuse
all the FTA materials.


2. FTA course programme published

The Free Technology Academy aims to establish a full educational
programme on Free Software and Open Standards. This programme
can be followed as a whole or only partially, and these studies can be
expanded at one or more of the partner universities.

The first set of courses is finally available. At the
http://www.ftacademy.org/courses/modules you will find the description
of each module included in the FTA master level programme.
The current modules are:
1) The concepts of Free Software and Open Standards
2) The GNU/Linux Operating System
3) Network Technologies
4) Web applications development
5) Economical aspects of Free Software
6) Legal aspects of the Information Society
7) Software development
8) Case Studies

Each educational module in the FTA programme stands on its own and can
be followed independently, provided that the learner has the required
previous knowledge. Introductory courses require almost no previous
knowledge, besides the basics necessary to access the FTA campus itself,
while more advanced modules are meant for IT professionals seeking to
acquire specific skills.

The materials of each course will be published in the next few months
under a free content license. The registration for the first courses will be
announced soon, so stay tuned!


3. Contact information

To know more about the FTA, visit the official site at
http://www.ftacademy.org. To receive information on when registration
will open exactly, keep an eye on the website or subscribe to the Announce
list at http://announces.ftacademy.org. If you have questions, or you are
interested to become a partner organisation in the FTA network, write us
at contact (at) ftacademy.org


4. About the Free Technology Academy

A Consortium formed by the Open University of Catalonia (Spain) and the
Open University of the Netherlands and led by the Free Knowledge
Institute (FKI)
has received the support from the EC's Lifelong Learning Programme to offer an
international educational programme on Free Software. The courses will
be taught
completely online in a virtual campus based on the Campus Project
interoperability
framework.

Following the Open Educational Resources movement, all learning
materials will be
freely available through the Internet. The use of Free Software (also
referred to
as Open Source software or Libre Software) is expanding rapidly in
governmental and
private organisations. However, still only a limited number of IT
professionals,
teachers and decision makers have sufficient knowledge and expertise
in these new
fields. The Free Technology Academy aims to address this gap by
providing high level
courses that fit into larger Master Programmes at the participating
universities.