[OSGeo-Discuss] Driving licenses for geofoss?

[andrea giacomelli]

Paolo: thanks for the brief status.

I have actually coordinated the team within GFOSS.it  (with Leonardo Lami
and Massimo di Stefano providing most of the actual preparation work on the
syllabus questions and data customisation).

Here are some opinions having closely followed the process since July 2007
within GFOSS.it (and since a lot earlier in terms of "localisation" of core
GIS curriculum).

- I think the ECDL certification is important (otherwise we would not have
committed a team of volunteers to work on it ;) )

- in terms of actual "accreditation": we expect it to work as other ECDL
"driving licenses" (they exist e.g. for "core office productivity" tools,
and there is an OpenOffice-based "driving license" for this).

- as ANY driving license (for cars, trucks, planes and boats), you need
experience to drive in rough environments, traffic conditions etc etc etc.

- last but not least, the more common "car" driving license will never tell
you: short cuts avoiding toll roads, locations of cozy restaurants on
secondary trails that you would never stop by if you are on a highway, and
how to tune your engine.

For this you a good friend who travels a lot is much better ;)

Switching back to ECDL context:

Our final version of the test developed for Quantum GIS was submitted to
AICA/Labsita (the bodies who cover the "GIS certification endorsed by ECDL
Foundation".

We are working together with AICA/Labsita representatives to iron out some
comments that have been presented. As all this is happening in the context
of a volunteer-based not-for-profit organisation (GFOSS.it), interacting
with very busy people, I would expect that before the August break in Italy
we will have some substantial news.

Last but not least, the interaction with the QGIS development team in the
context of revising some parts of the application in light of needs for the
certification tests, were an excellent case of community-driven bug fixing.

Let's see what happens: in the meantime we have seen (as of last year)
attempts to develop a similar test under gvSIG etc etc etc.

If there are other folks on these list who may be interested to develop the
test on other packages, and would like to take advantage of our experience
with QGIS and setting up a free data set for use in Italy, we will be glad
to "share alike" our efforts...

Regards,

Andrea, aka pibinko
http://www.pibinko.org

2008/6/11 Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it>:

> Jeroen Ticheler ha scritto:
>
> > I'm curious to hear some opinions from people on the European Computer
> > Driving License (see http://www.ecdl.org ) Foundation.
> >
> > There's a specific option to obtain certificates on (proprietary) GIS
> > software. Since we're talking about a Foundation, FOSS4G providers
> > should be able to offer similar certification.
> > http://www.ecdl.org/products/index.jsp?b=0-102&pID=771&nID=772
>
> GFOSS.it is already involved in the process: we have prepared the test,
> and soon we'll be ready to implement the whole process.
> pc
> --
> Paolo Cavallini, see: * http://www.faunalia.it/pc *
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