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The "Association of Greek Users and Friends of Free Software" joins the FTA

Submitted by wouter on Sun, 05/15/2011 - 11:34

Amsterdam, Netherlands/Thessaloniki, Greece -- May 2011 --

The Free Technology Academy (FTA) and the Association of Greek Users and Friends of Free Software / Open Source Software (Greek Linux User Group - Greek.LUG), announced today their partnership, joining the FTA's International Associate Partner Network. The Network aims to expand the availability of professional educational courses and materials covering the concepts and applications of Free Software and the Open Standards.

The FTA consists of an advanced virtual campus with various course modules, which can be followed entirely on-line. The learning materials are all published under a free license and can be accessed by anyone, but learners enrolled in the FTA will be guided by professional Teaching Staff from one of the participating Universities. The FTA aims to enable IT professionals, students, teachers and decision makers to undertake accredited professional education in Free Software.

One of the FTA objectives is to establish a strong relationship with the free software community and to turn the FTA course materials into an essential reference. The FTA seeks to educate and promote the adoption of Free Technologies, without losing sight of the Free Software community's core purpose of freedom and social transformation.

Constantine Mousafiris, Special Registar of GREEKLUG, said

We are both happy and proud to be in a position to announce our Association's new partnership with a prestigious European institution, the Free Technology Academy (FTA). This cooperation will fit nicely into an international partner-network with all involved parties motivated by the same principles: passion for Free Software, for unrestricted access to knowledge, desire to encourage further spreading of use of Open Standards and a determination to offer outstanding quality of educational courses in the subject of Free Software. It will be priority to highlight the benefits of adoption of Free Software, both in the Public Administration and in the corporate and private world. We aim to raise awareness and contribute to the building of a critical mass for the use of Free Software and Open Standards. This partnership offers us both the expertise and the right platform, so that we can offer excellent opportunities to the Greek public to study all possible aspects of Free Technology, from the most basic to the most advanced level of technical knowledge.

Wouter Tebbens, President of the FKI and Director of the FTA said about the partnership:

Our vision is to build the Academy together with those that are ahead in learning and sharing knowledge about Free Software. It is therefore a great pleasure to see the Association of Greek  Users and Friends of Free Software join the FTA. We need to do this with skilled and passionate people. Then we're strong. We look all forward to welcome GreekLUG members and friends in the FTA community and courses.

Details of the Partnership

1) Contribution in terms of translation in Greek of various FTA books and other educational material; 2) Contribution aiming towards either improving the existing educational material (i.e. through providing book reviews, etc) or contributing towards the creation of new material for the FTA courses; 3) Sharing with FTA partners various activities that can be organised jointly and with the specific aim to promote Free Software and Open Standards.

Anyone  interested can join the FTA Virtual Campus freely by registering at http://campus.ftacademy.org
Enrollment for courses starting in September 2011 is now open; learners can browse the available courses and register at /courses/programme

About the Free Technology Academy

A Consortium formed by the Open University of Catalonia (Spain), the Open University of the Netherlands and led by the Free Knowledge Institute (FKI), the FTA has started up - with support from the EC's Lifelong Learning Programme - an international educational programme on Free Software. The courses are taught completely online, supported by various Free Software Asynchronous Educational Platforms, in a virtual campus based on the Campus Project interoperability framework. Following the Free Software and Open Educational Resources movements, all learning materials are 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 lead to a larger Master Degree Programme, at the participating universities.

About the Association of Greek Users and Friends of Free Software/ Open Source Software

The "Association of Greek Users and Friends of FS/OSS" is a Non Goverment Organisation / Non Profit Society, whose purpose is to promote GNU/Linux and FS/OSS (Free Software / Open Source Software). Its main target is to spread the word about the freedom of software and the choice that anybody could and should have, using computers. Since 2009, it is an Affiliate Organisation with Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and from October 2010, GreekLUG is the Master Affiliate of Linux Professional Institute (LPI) in Greece. This new cooperation with the Free Technology Academy marks our Association's third international partnership and it comes to enhance the Greek presence in the European Free Software movement. It also amplifies the chances of our members and of the wider Greek public to gain easy access to high quality educational resources regarding Free Software and Open Standards.