Re: status of certification and training

Hi,

also a short update from my side, to make handing over the tasks easier.

There have been discussions with Mike and Paul from ALISON. They have 
been in touch since 2009, and Mike also had a talk in Orvieto.

As you can imagine, in the current situation, I cannot work on the topic 
of OpenOffice.org certifications, so I just wanted to keep you in the 
loop and remind that there's a work item.

If there is anyone who wants to work on the topic, Peter has a proposal 
by ALISON and has been in touch with them.

Florian


Ian wrote on 2010-09-15 14.38:
> On Wed, 2010-09-15 at 13:21 +0200, Florian Effenberger wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> last week, I had a phone call with Mike and Paul from ALISON - some of
>> you may remember Mike very well from the talk he held at OOoCon 2009 in
>> Orvieto.
>>
>> They were (and are) interested in supporting and joining our efforts for
>> certification and training, and will come up with a more detailed
>> proposal. They have the required framework as well as lots of expertise
>> in their area.
>>
>> Many of you know that I'm not only buried in work :-) but also that
>> certification and training is not my area of working. I know Mike has
>> been in contact with Alexandro, and probably Louis, and we all know that
>> the certification issue has been idling around for a very long time.
>>
>> Can someone bring me up to date on what's happening in that area
>> currently? Is there already a group working on it that likes to get in
>> touch with ALISON?
>
> There is a group in the certification project that includes Alexandro,
> Evan, myself, Gabriel Gurley and Manfred Reiter. We have already put the
> unit assessment criteria on the project Wiki and we applied for an EU
> grant to support development. Unfortunately that was not successful but
> from the feedback it looks like we can fix that for next year. (We have
> been successful in two other similar applications in other areas) I have
> approval from the UK Sector Skills Council to develop a version of the
> ITQ national vocational qualification for IT Users to fit OOo - It will
> be called Award in IT User Skills (Openoffice.org) and be accredited in
> the UK National Qualifications framework. This framework is one of the
> first to be referenced to the European Qualifications framework so that
> employers throughout Europe will recognise its value. Once we do this in
> the UK, we will apply again for a transfer of innovation grant to
> transfer this to other EU partner countries and should be able to get a
> grant of around 300,000 Euros to pay for training, travel etc. In
> addition to the EU links, we have established contacts in Malaysia with
> a joint project with UPSI, the biggest teacher training university
> there. We have a pilot in Kenya, and established links in USA through
> the National Center for Open Source in Education, South Africa and
> India.
>
> Our target is to have the qualification fully accredited through the UK
> government regulators by January, then we can start training assessors
> and apply for a supporting transfer of innovation grant to support and
> accelerate that work next year. We need to agree with the community how
> to provide revenue to the project from accredited certification. In the
> UK, courses leading to accredited qualifications are funded those that
> are not aren't so it is important to be accredited.
>
>> I'm sure that details on certification and training have to be
>> determined -- I'm all for having things in community hands instead of at
>> a single corporation -- but I guess that having some external support
>> and input is highly welcome.
>
> I'm currently talking to a large UK exam board with a 200 million Euro
> turnover. If this works out they are an exempted charity focused on
> education so there will be no need to worry about single corporations.
>
>
>> Let me know if you are involved or interested.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Florian
>>
>
>

-- 
Florian Effenberger <[email protected]>
OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead
Tel: +49 8341 99660880
Fax: +49 8341 99660889
Mobile: +49 151 14424108
Skype: floeff | Twitter/Identi.ca: @floeff