The Free Technology Academy is closed. To know why, and what may come next, please read here. To find and download FTA resources not listed in these pages, instead, please visit the Free Technology Academy File Archive! Thanks!

FTA Scientific Council & Early Bird Registration extended

Submitted by wouter on Mon, 02/01/2010 - 10:52

1. The FTA presents its Scientific Council

The Free Technology Academy is proud to announce the initial members of the Scientific Council. The Council consists of internationally recognised specialists who oversee the FTA's quality procedures. Members are selected from different continents and backgrounds, with leading experts from various universities and respected members within the Free Software and Free Knowledge communities.

WARNING: the date of this post is approximate! All announcements from 2008 to 2013 have APPROXIMATE, guessed dates, because restored from a partial backup, to document the history of FTA.

The Free Technology Academy has started its first two online courses at the end of January 2010. The number of learners registered for participation in the courses exceeded the original expectations over three times. 33 Learners participate in module one: "The Concepts of Free Software and Open Standards" and 32 people in module two: "GNU/Linux Operating Systems". The learners have joined the FTA Virtual Campus where they engage in discussions and debates on specific issues related to the course's content. The learning methodology is based on three main pillars: course materials, class debates and Continuous Assessment Activities (CAA).

In line with the founding principles of the FTA (and of Free Software), the Academy has published the first course books under a free license on its website. As downloads of these books quickly rose over 4 digits, distribution through the BitTorrent protocol was set up. See for more information: /materials

2. Members of the Scientific Council

The initial Council is formed by:

  • Susan D'Antoni (Canada) - Virtual Learning Specialist
  • Nagarjuna G. (India) - Homi Bhabha Centre For Science Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and Free Software Foundation India
  • Jesús M. González Barahona (Spain) - University of Rey Juan Carlos I
  • Rob Koper (The Netherlands) - Open University of the Netherlands
  • Ronaldo Lemos (Brazil) - Center for Technology & Society at the Fundação Getulio Vargas Law School Creative Commons International
  • Anne Østergaard (Denmark) involved in the GNOME Foundation and the Free Software Foundation Europe
  • Elizabeth Stark (United States) - Yale Law School, Harvard Law School and Students for Free Culture

The members of the Scientific Council will oversee quality aspects in relation to: the curricula and learning materials, learner performance, tutors, learning facilities and outcomes assessment. Quality aspects are assessed and improved before, during and after the running of courses in the course programme.

More information about the SC and short biographies can be found at /about/sc

3. Early Bird Registration extended to March 1st 2010!

Registrations for six course modules are open. On April 26th, the second run with three modules will take off. The early bird registration fee, 25% discount for registrations up to 2 months before the scheduled start of the course, has been extended to March 1st!

The second run of the FTA includes the following course modules: "Web applications development", "Economic models" and "Software development". Standard registration for these modules close one week before the start. Register now online to have the benefit of the discounts.

4. About the Free Technology Academy

A Consortium formed by the Open University of Catalonia (Spain), the Open University of the Netherlands and University of Agder (Norway) and led by the Free Knowledge Institute (FKI), the FTA has received the support from the EC's Lifelong Learning Programme to set up 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 rapidly expanding in governmental and private organisations. However, still only a limited number of ICT 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.