[Qgis-psc] Notes about certification

[Richard Duivenvoorde]

On 09/12/2018 02:59 PM, Tim Sutton wrote:
...
> I’m really a little surprised by this thread because in the past when
> some of us have advocated using e.g. GitHub for tracking issues rather
> than Redmine, a lot of people shout the idea down saying ‘FOSS or
> death!’ :-) Now we seem to have a different standard for training
> materials than for everything else. The desire for open training
> materials from QGIS Certifying organisations was less a question of
> ‘what is your contribution?’ (We ask that separately) and more a
> question of ‘if you want to certify QGIS users will you also be
> transparent about what and how you train your users’. We never had
> intention of requiring translations (as Yves raised) or mandating that
> the materials are managed by QGIS.org <http://QGIS.org> (though it would
> be nice to have a central pool of training exercises as Richard
> advocates) in a git repo.
> 
> That aside, since this seems to be a somewhat decisive issue, the lesser
> solution would be simply that the materials are made available to Kurt
> for review and he can use his judgement from there as to whether they
> provide an adequate course. Lets not get too stuck on these things…we
> first raised certification plans in Wroclaw hackfest in 2010 and I would
> like to just keep moving forward and not get paralysed by the
> details….lets just adjust them to something that most people are
> comfortable with and move on….
> 
> I will add a last thought: I get regular messages from people who use
> the training materials we wrote thanking me and tell me how they are
> using it to train people in some far flung place. If your plan (like
> mine) for QGIS is social upliftment by allowing people to better
> understand and manage the world around them, sharing our training
> materials is surely a huge component in realising this vision.

Hi Tim,

I'm a huge FOSS fan, I'm fully dedicated to open access courseware AND I
hope QGIS is socially uplifting countries/people :-)
And having some discussion here around me, I'm getting more into your
poition, but still have the feeling that docs are different from code.

I do agree though that 'giving back' is an important thing.

But as said: let's move on! I also think about full disclosure of
material now, but not to the rest of the world, but only to "the
community", as in
- what you propose: the certifying body
- or bigger: the "QGIS training material writers group". So at least
QGIS/community can reuse the material into the writing of a really open
training material.

And we already have (both yours) "A Gentle Introduction to GIS" and
https://docs.qgis.org/2.18/en/docs/training_manual/ off course, being
rewritten now via a Grant by Matteo.

Hans vd Kwast was also tweeting about his QGIS OpenCourseWare:
https://twitter.com/hansakwast/status/1039044047837581312

I also really like the https://github.com/FOSS4GAcademy labs
(http://spatialquerylab.com/foss4g-academy-curriculum/)

Groet,

Richard