Re: certification [was: Re: [Fsfe-uk] Intro and a request for information]

[Ian Lynch]

On Mon, 2004-11-15 at 00:09, Philip Hunt wrote:

> > Ask them why they aren't supporting OpenOffice.org as its user base is
> > the fastest growing of any Office suite in the world. Over 30 million
> > downloads to date.
> 
> Good question.
> 
> Where does the ECDL come from? Is it to do with the EU? (I looked on the
> UK website and it didn't say).

AFAIK, ECDL was an initiative started around 1990 in Finland (but this
might not be accurate as its a vague memory - I first came across it
working for the Specialist Schools Trust back in the early 90s)

It became popular because quite a lot of people were disatisfied with
CLAIT (not too surprising :-) ) so it started to get quite a lot of
publicity. Once the momentum was behind it, it was accepted by QCA. That
part of the model is what I intend for INGOTs. Get it very popular at
grass roots and really its pretty academic whehter QCA officially
recognise it or not. The main advantage to ECDL in being on the section
96 is that it gets funded by Learning and Skills Councils.

> Is the ECDL in any way taxpayer funded? 

Yes. As a Section 96 qualifications LSCs will provide the funds. I
believe this is only really targeted at post 16 training. Hence INGOTs
designed to be mainly used in schools in KS2 and KS3. There is no
suitable skills based certification for this age group and if we get
them all doing INGOTs why would they later need to do ECDL? ECDL is also
expensive anyway. Again AFAIK it cost about £40 a candidate for the
various things required same is trus of other "industry qualifications"
such as MOUS. A GCSE cost under £10 and if a school maximises its use of
INGOTs it can be less than £1 a certificate. 

> If it is, then it shouldn't be a 
> form of advertising for private companies -- if Microsoft and Lotus want 
> people trained in using their software, let them organise it and pay for 
> it.

Even that is a bit of a grey area. Oracle for example are sponsoring
specialist schools by setting up Oracle Academies. This counts as
£25,000 in sponsorship yet the guidance says that in general software
and professional services are ineligible. So this is an example of the
DfES changing their rules to accommodate a large corporation. Sun missed
a trick because I told them when they brought out Star Office that they
should have given it no discount to UK schools an presented it as
sponsorship. Then the government is effectively paying schools to use
it,

>  Instead, it should concentrate on training people in open source 
> software such as OOo.org, which is owned by everyone (in the sense that 
> everyone has the permananet right to use and modify it).

I agree, but they aren't likely to do this because a few individuals
complain. My view is that if I can mobilise sufficient grass roots
support for INGOTs across several countries but especially in schools
here, the Government will have to take notice. Think of all those
voters. We can also play the same game as other industry qualifications
by getting industries that are friendly to FLOSS to back INGOTs. I
already have Linspire on board, the OpenOffice.org communty, AFFS,
SchoolforgeUK and I am arranging a meeting with Sun and hope to get
others such as Novell, maybe Redhat and Mandrake. This is politics so we
need to get groups with a common interest together to increase the
political significance of what we are doing. We can change attitudes but
I realised a while back that it requires a coherent strategy that is
doable ie I have had to take something where I can incorporate it with
my current business effort to justify the time involved, cost very
little to set up and is easily globally expandable through a franchising
model. Its take two years of planning and trials to get to this point.
If anyone out there wants to set up a business based on FLOSS, setting
up INGOT Academies is a way of doing it with the only outlay required,
time. This makes it attractive to developing economies because they
don't need a lot of money to get started and they can charge out the
services at a rate their local economy can stand.

-- 
Ian Lynch <address@hidden>
ZMS Ltd