FTA Campus News

Richard Stallman's lecture at FTA

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:17:07 GMT

by Franco Iacomella.

Richard Stallman, father of the Free Software and main figure its movement, will provide a Guest Lecture conference in the Free Technology Academy.

He will be with us during the first ten days of April to discuss the topics he brought up in the lecture.

We have enabled a dedicated class room in the FTA Campus where you can join to discuss about the lecture. Remember that Richard will participate in the classroom during next weeks to answer questions and participate in the discussion.

Join the class room here.

Guest Lecture video published by Benjamin Mako Hill

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 16:54:53 GMT

by Wouter Tebbens.

As indicated last week through the FTA Campus News, we have published a Guest Lecture video by Benjamin Mako Hill. He will be with us during the first ten days of February to discuss the topics he brought up in the lecture.

We have enabled a dedicated class room in the FTA Campus where you can join to discuss about the lecture. Remember that Mako will join us next week to answer questions and participate in the discussion.

Join the class room here.

Enjoy!

(Edited by David Jacovkis - original submission Tuesday, 25 January 2011, 05:54 PM)

(Edited by David Jacovkis - original submission Wednesday, 2 February 2011, 12:54 AM)

(Edited by David Jacovkis - original submission Wednesday, 2 February 2011, 12:55 AM)

Guest Lecture: Benjamin Mako Hill

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 16:45:31 GMT

by Wouter Tebbens.

Dear participants,

we have invited Benjamin Mako Hill to provide a video Guest Lecture at the FTA! Somewhere next week we'll provide you with the video - keep watching the news! And then we'll have Mako join us in the campus to discuss your questions and comments.

One thing that we can reveal already is the title of his lecture: "Antifeatures".

Here's his short bio from Wikipedia:

Benjamin Mako Hill (born December 2, 1980) is a Debian hacker, intellectual property researcher, activist and author. He is a contributor and free software developer as part of the Debian and Ubuntu projects as well as the author of two best-selling technical books on the subject, Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 Bible (ISBN 978-0-7645-7644-7) and The Official Ubuntu Book (ISBN 978-0-13-243594-9). He currently serves as a member of the Free Software Foundation board of directors.^[2] 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. He is also a Fellow at the MIT Center for Future Civic Media where he coordinates the development of software for civic organizing, and works as an advisor and contractor for the One Laptop per Child project. He is a speaker for the GNU Project,^[3] and serves on the board of Software Freedom International (the organization that organizes Software Freedom Day). Since 2006 he is married to Mika Matsuzaki, having used mathematically constrained wedding vows at the marriage ceremony.^[4]

best regards,

the FTA team

Designing a new community portal

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 11:08:47 GMT

by Wouter Tebbens.

As you may know, in 2010 we have been working to set up a community portal for the FTA community. That should be an inviting place where FTA staff, tutors, formal and informal learners can join and engage in (complementary) learning activities. In our vision for the FTA, such community space is an important element where we would like to move certain learning activities that are currently taking place in closed class rooms, while encouraging people to use this space to build and share knowledge together.

However we are not completely happy with the community portal we have set up so far. It is built upon the Mahara free software application, which in itself is a very useful piece of software, especially for ePortfolios. To name a few important drawbacks: first the integration with other tools doesn't work very well. Yes, to set up single-sign-on, that works quite well; as you can see we have done with Moodle-Mahara. The challenge lies in feeding content from Mahara to other places outside Mahara, like the FTA website, personal and institutional sites. We'd want to show the latest posts, most active groups etc etc. Its seems that the software architecture doesn't help us resolve this in an easy way (we could adapt the code, but would like to avoid too much rewriting it). Such community space should be connected to a network of other spaces and applications. A second problem is the fact that accessing pages - even for just viewing - requires the user to login. That may be understandable for the way the software is designed, but it doesn't help when interested in building an open platform, that invites people to see what's going on, and it hinders search engines to index the pages.

So we are reviewing our options and requirements. We want the community space to be really useful for its potential users - being FTA staff, tutors, partners, Guest Lecturers, enrolled learners and informal learners. We would like that this space transforms into the most active place where more and more the classroom activities move towards the community space. We would like this space to be thé place where we discuss about the future of the FTA, its development and daily maintenance. We also would like other educational projects about Free Technologies to make use of this infrastructure.

Therefore this message is also an invitation for you to join the design process. We have set up an initial list of requirements and selection of the tools. Currently we doubt between Mahara and Elgg. But maybe you have more suggestions or comments. Please add them. See the FTA Campus Wiki.

And you could join the discussion in the FTA Support Forums. Your participation is much appreciated. We hope to see you around!

best,

the FTA Team

Invitation to FTA Community Portal

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 11:01:55 GMT

by Wouter Tebbens.

Dear FTA participants,

The FTA Team is continuously working to add new features to the FTA Campus. One of the things many of us felt was missing is a community space where people can present themselves, participate in FTA related projects or come up with new ones.

We have recently set up the FTA Community Portal which aims to fullfil these three objectives: 1) to function as an open space for learning, 2) to present oneself and get to know the wider FTA community and 3) to participate in projects around the FTA or Free Technologies in general. In a later phase it is also our intention to provide specific spaces and services for FTA alumni within the Portal.

The portal is based on Mahara, a free software e-portfolio application that the FTA development team has integrated with Moodle and the University Campus framework, which are at the heart of the FTA Campus. This software allows users to keep an online portfolio, create a personal blog or feed an external one, participate in forums and groups, etc.

Though we haven't yet made it public, we want you to be the first ones to know. If you want to join us, please login to the Campus and click on the link in the top left box called "FTA Community Portal". Please note that you need to be logged in to the Campus to be able to do real stuff in the community space!

The FTA Community Portal is still under development. Suggestions for improvement are very welcome; you can contribute here.

In future courses we will use this portal for some of the learning activities, in closed or more open groups. We will also use it to discuss the improvement of course materials or the production of new ones. And of course you are welcome to join in or start up new discussions and groups.

At the same time, the Free Technology Academy Campus has just opened its doors for non-registered students. Anyone can now create a user account and access many Campus features, like the FTA Wiki and the FTA Community Portal. Enrolment in most courses still requires a tuition fee, as to ensure the FTA team can provide qualified teachers for the courses, assessment and certification.

I hope you will appreciate these initiatives and I look forward to seeing you around!

Wouter Tebbens

Director Free Technology Academy
http://ftacademy.org/
Free Knowledge Institute
http://freeknowledge.eu/