[plug] Professional Linux Organisation + certification

[Jacqueline McNally]

Navarre raised the issue of certification or accreditation as one of the 
potential roles of the Professional Linux Organisation.

I am currently researching information with regard to the ICDL 
(www.icdl.org) and the LPI certification (www.lpi.org). LPI certification 
currently has two levels and they are both Linux admin and OS tweaking. 
Various organisations provide training materials and testing centres for 
the LPI and ICDL certification.

The ICDL is more a general knowledge and competency certification for 
desktop applications. ACS is responsible for the accreditation of testing 
centres in Australia, and there are a number of those. ACS is not 
responsible for courseware or training and some of the testing centres may 
have these materials or recommend that you obtain them from a number of 
groups that have prepared these materials based on the ICDL syllabus. 
Although, the ICDL and their syllabus appears to be vendor neutral, the 
courseware, training and testing provided in Australia (elsewhere I have 
not yet confirmed) are with applications that are popular or common on the 
desktop.

I am interested in the ICDL as I strongly believe that the people that can 
make best use of this certification are people that may not necessarily 
have the resources to purchase proprietary software or new computers in 
order to obtain certification. The examiners will argue that you do not 
have to, but I know from experience that if a course participant has the 
opportunity to play and practise, i.e. make mistakes in their own time - 
you learn and remember much better.

I always try to provide learning and skills that are transferrable in the 
documentation and training materials that I prepare. For example, the 
handout that I created for Computer Angels Australia's Biggest Morning Tea, 
we had three different browsers being used throughout the morning. It did 
not matter which computer new users sat in front of, the handout assisted 
their learning to surf the 'Net. If they were to take the handout to the 
public library, they would be able to use the computers there to continue 
their research.

I have had many *discussions* wrt to education vs training. I personally 
believe that I am letting people down, if I only train people to follow a 
Noddy's guide. There is much more satisfaction in seeing someone obtain and 
use skills that can be applied to further approach something they do not 
already know, but have the confidence to follow it through. For example, in 
most applications we know that we can open existing files or documents. It 
is much more powerful to show people how to find existing documents, to 
open in different applications, then to say, "Choose Open from the File 
menu" and expecting to see all their previously created documents in one 
place (directory). Recently, I assisted a non-profit group to move their 
data from an old computer to the new one. We had 4 years of files in "My 
Documents" to sort through :(

I am looking to create courseware and or training that enables people to 
obtain their ICDL, even tho' we know that the examiners use a different 
underlying operating system. The issue of the courseware being suitable to 
pass the tests is something that I will need to follow through, either here 
in Australia or with the International body. Perhaps PLO may become 
equivalent to the ACS and be able to accreditate ICDL testing centres.

The ICDL syllabus is pretty much covered by Linux and OpenOffice.org. The 
only thing that is missing is a database, and although you can use a 
database with OpenOffice.org it is not at the rudimentary level that is 
required by the ICDL. Anyway, I will push on with the components that I 
know I can do.

All the best
Jacqueline
http://mc2.vicnet.net.au/users/zenryaku/

Community Contact, Australia/New Zealand
OpenOffice.org Marketing Project
(www.openoffice.org)

Are you a computer angel? (www.ca.asn.au)