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OSS skills for students and educators!

I will plug one offering I’m particularly pleased about, as it benefits worthy others and a cause in general.

For educators and students, Open Query course days only cost $100 (or even $50 for a student, on a stand-by basis). We were already doing this for a while, and our first course in Melbourne had a student participant. Noone noticed, as they are treated just like averybody else: they get all the materials, the fun training, the coffee/tea, bikkies, and lunch (real food ;-). Our course materials are also made available to educational institutions. Yes, for free.

The reason for all this is not to score brownie points with anyone, but to truly help students and educators with gaining skills and adopting open source technology. It’s generally not a matter of convincing, but of financial resources and sometimes available time. OQ’s one-day modules make the latter easier to handle.

Promoting OSS in education (tertiary level, but actually also high schools) is a vital long-term issue, and while others sell their paperwork or have lobbyists hogging the doorstep of institutions, I believe this is a better way to go. Whatever people learn to use now, they will deploy later. If we want it to be OSS, trying to extract as much money as possible from the institutions now is not going to cut it. Proprietary vendors might even beat that on price! See it as a long-term investment, as that’s exactly what it is. So, which other OSS training providers will join this endeavour?

Right. And now, I will take my daughter out for dinner. Phoebe will turn 3 this Sunday, and tonight she wants to eat pasta. I’m a capable cook, but she is very well behaved in restaurants, so why not go out every once in a while!

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2 thoughts on “OSS skills for students and educators!

  1. Great idea, and thanks for that! I am a student myself, and find it impossible to fork out large amount of money to attend seminars/conferences/trainings.

    Happy Birthday to Phoebe 🙂

  2. Hope Pheebs had a good birthday!

    I’m glad you provide the discount. It’s definitely truly needed. Good work! I think it’s important to provide OSS mentality early on — especially in college and high school, when young adults are getting their first taste of the actual challenge between “do what you love” and “make as much money as you possibly can, climbing the corporate ladder!”

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