FTA Announcement #3: The academy opens its doors

1. Available courses

WARNING: approximate date! 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 opens its doors to students. The registration process for the first 2 courses has already started. The courses currently open are "The concepts of Free Software and Open Standards" and "The GNU/Linux Operating System". These courses will start on January 25th, 2010. The following sections will introduce you to each of these modules.

Module 1: The concepts of Free Software and Open Standards

What is free software? What is a free license? and what are its implications? How is free software developed? How are free software projects financed and what are the business models associated with them? What motivates developers, especially volunteers, to become involved in free software projects? Who are these developers? How are their projects coordinated, and how is the software that they produce? In short, what is the overall panorama of free software?

These are the sort of questions that we will try to answer in this course. Because free software is increasing its presence in the media and in debates among IT professionals, citizens in general are starting to talk about it, but it is still unknown for many people. And even those who are familiar with it are often aware of just some of its features, and mostly ignorant about others.

Module 2: The GNU/Linux Operating System

GNU/Linux systems have reached an important level of maturity, allowing to integrate them in almost any kind of work environment, from a desktop PC or a handheld device to the sever facilities of a big company.
This module covers the main aspects of the administration of GNU/Linux systems. We will learn how to install, configure and maintain several computer services, and how to optimise the available resources. The activities that students will carry out in this module cover these topics in a practical approach, applying them in real GNU/Linux systems.

Registration fees and special disccounts

For 2010, the standard tuition fee for a standard 5 ECTS course in the FTA is defined as EUR 380. Scholarships can be requested for the first courses according to the time of registration prior to the start of a particular course:

• Pioneer registration: 50% discount for registrations until December 07th 2009.
• Early adopter registration: 25% discount for registrations until December 31st 2009.
• Standard Registration without discount applies in all other cases.

The FTA charges tuition fees to cover only the marginal costs of running the courses and tries to keep costs as low as reasonably possible to make participation in its tutored courses accessible to everyone. We are open to suggestions about alternative funding sources that allow us to grant more and better scholarship opportunities.

Note that registrations are only valid once the registration form has been correctly submitted and verified and the corresponding tuition fee has been received at the FTA bank account. The registration period ends one week before the start of a course or when the maximum number of learners for a course has been reached.

Register now and get the special discount in the registration fee!

To get more information about the FTA study programme go to: /courses/programme

3. 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), 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 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.

• More information:
• Contact information: access@freeknowledge.eu