[p2p-research] FTA Announcement #11: Register Now, Guest Lectures, DocBook and New FTA Materials

[Franco Iacomella]

Permanent link: http://ftacademy.org/announce/11

FTA Announcement #11: Register Now, Guest Lectures, DocBook and New FTA 
Materials
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1. Last chance to register for the first term of 2011!
2. Rey Juan Carlos University joins the FTA Associate Network
3. Upcoming Guest Lectures at the FTA Campus
4. FTA books in DocBook format
5. New FTA materials published
6. About the Free Technology Academy


== 1. Last chance to register for the first term of 2011! ==

Registrations for the 2011 programme are growing at a very good pace. 
Remember that you can register for any course of the programme until one 
week before the term starts. This means that you have time until January 
3rd to register for these courses:

     * The concepts of Free Software and Open Standards
     * Basic GNU/Linux
     * Free Software Utilities
     * Network Technologies
     * Web applications development
     * Software development
     * Deployment of Free Software and Case Studies

Don't leave it for the last minute! Register now at 
https://ftacademy.org/registration-form

Having trouble choosing only a couple of courses? Keep in mind that many 
of them are also offered later in the year: 
http://ftacademy.org/courses/programme

If you're still in doubt, contact us at registrations at ftacademy.org and 
we'll help you create your own programme!

== 2. Rey Juan Carlos University joins the FTA Associate Network ==

The FTA is proud to announce the incorporation of the University Rey 
Juan Carlos (Spain) to its Associate Partner Network, through the 
participation of the LibreSoft research group.

LibreSoft offers a programme on Free Software that leads to an official 
Master Degree by the URJC. The LibreSoft group will contribute courses 
such as Quality Assessment of Free Software, one of its main research 
topics, to the FTA programme. Apart from that, the LibreSoft group is 
involved in the taskforce for an International Master Programme in Free 
Software since the start, where FTA partners cooperate to design a 
common curriculum.

Read the official announcement here: http://ftacademy.org/announce/URJC

== 3. Upcoming Guest Lectures at the FTA Campus ==

FTA Guest Lectures are open to all: the videos will be published online 
and a forum will be available for those who want to discuss it with the 
lecturer. The FTA will welcome the new year with two first-class guest 
lecturers: Richard M. Stallman and Benjamin Mako Hill.

Richard M. Stallman is a Free Software developer and activist. He is the 
founder of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project. He started 
the Free Software movement and is arguably one of the most influential 
advocates of Free Software worldwide. In his lecture, Stallman will 
focus on the most recent attacks to users' freedoms, such as ACTA and 
DRM. This Guest Lecture will take place in February.

Benjamin Mako Hill is a Debian hacker, intellectual property researcher, 
activist and author. He is a free software developer and contributes to 
the Debian and Ubuntu projects. He's also the author of two best-selling 
technical books on the subject. He currently serves as a member of the 
Free Software Foundation board of directors and of Wikimedia 
Foundation's board. Hill has a Masters degree from the MIT Media Lab and 
is currently a Senior Researcher at the MIT Sloan School of Management 
where he studies free software communities and business models. His 
lecture, entitled, "Antifeatures", will take place in January 2011, stay 
tuned for the concrete dates!

== 4. FTA books in DocBook format ==

Until now, FTA coursebooks have been available in PDF format only. This 
allows everyone to easily read and print them, but it has not been easy 
to edit or remix the materials. Now FTA coursebooks are also available 
in the DocBook format: a semantic markup language for technical 
documentation. DocBook enables users to create documents in a 
presentation-neutral form that captures the logical structure of the 
content, which can then be published in a variety of formats, including 
HTML, XHTML, EPUB, PDF, man pages, and others - without requiring users 
to make any changes to the source.

We expect that this new possibility will be exploited by the FTA 
community. We hope that new creations take place, thereby materializing 
the opportunities offered by the copyleft licenses applied to the 
original course books. We invite you to discuss all the possibilities in 
our community space: http://campus.ftacademy.org/community/

== 5. New FTA materials published ==

The FTA is proud to announce the availability of three new coursebooks, 
all under a free Copyleft license: GNU/Linux Basic, Implementation of 
Free Software Systems and the coursebook for Free Software Tools and 
Utilities.

"GNU/Linux Basic" will be taught in all three terms of 2011. The aim of 
this book is to initiate you into the world of GNU/Linux. It covers the 
basics of the free software, how to use and modify GNU/Linux to suit 
your needs, and how to find your way in this new world more easily. The 
book is not based on any particular distribution, but we need to specify 
certain actions for most of the examples and activities, for which we 
will use Debian GNU/Linux. Although this distribution is not as 
intuitive and user-friendly as others, it will serve to explain all the 
characteristics of a GNU/Linux-based operating system, step by step.

You can get a copy of the course book, written by Joaquín López 
Sánchez-Montañés, Sofia Belles Ramos, Roger Baig Viñas and Francesc Aulí 
Llinàs, here: http://ftacademy.org/materials/fsm/13#1

"Implementation of Free Software Systems" was written by Amadeu Albós 
Raya and Óscar David Sánchez Jiménez. This course book examines the 
deployment of Free Software systems. The reader will become familiar 
with agencies and projects related to the deployment of Free Software in 
the public and private sectors, and will learn to identify and 
understand the consequences of the use and exploitation of Free Software 
in different areas. Several case studies will be released soon as 
complementary materials. The FTA course "Deployment of Free Software 
Systems" is scheduled for the first and third terms of 2011.

You can get a copy of the course book here: 
http://ftacademy.org/materials/fsm/8#1

The course book "Tools and utilities in free software", written by Jesús 
Corrius i Llavina, is part of the course "Free Software Tools and 
Utilities". The students are introduced to some of the programs designed 
for desktop environments of end users. These programs allow users to 
browse the Internet securely (Mozilla), manage e-mail and work in groups 
(Evolution) and create text documents, spreadsheets and presentations 
(OpenOffice.org). In this course, students will also discover how to 
work with these free tools in different environments. "Free Software 
Tools and Utilities" will also be taught in all three terms of 2011.

Download a copy here: http://ftacademy.org/materials/fsm/10#1

Register for these courses here: http://ftacademy.org/courses/programme/2011

== 6. About the Free Technology Academy ==

A Consortium formed by the Open University of Catalonia (Spain), the 
Open University of the Netherlands and the 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 are 
taught completely online in a virtual campus based on the Campus Project 
interoperability framework.

Following the Open Educational Resources movement, 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 fit into larger Master Programmes at the participating 
universities.

* More information: http://www.ftacademy.org
* Contact information: contact[at]ftacademy.org
* Digital version: http://ftacademy.eu/announce/10


Free Technology Academy Newsletter
http://www.ftacademy.eu