Education and science are central issues for Free Software. So when Free Software Foundation Europe was approached by Wouter Tebbens from the Internet Society in the Netherlands for a project on education in and about Free Software and Open Standards, I was immediately happy to help with the project draft and consortium assembly. This was almost one year ago.
Today Jonas Öberg and I are representing FSFE at the SELF kick-off conference in The Hague, NL. Even though I am still suffering from a flu I picked up at the WIPO PCDA, this is a positively exciting event.
SELF stands for ”Scientific Education and Learning in Freedom” and will be working the next two years with funding by the European Commission to build a Free Software portal and platform with Free educational material on Free Software and Open Standards.
As a first step, we will work to identify what already exists and is available under Free licenses. Secondly we will identify the gaps to then work to fill them with courses and documents that can be used by teachers, professors and students around the world.
The ISOC is recording the entire conference, although I do not yet know where and how they will be putting it online afterwards. You might want to check out thee SELF project page for more information.
