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Texas Support for Open Source Technology Education
OpenSourceForAll writes "North Lake College in Irving, TX is offering the first Open Source Technology certificate in the U.S. beginning Spring of 2006. The certificate program was made possible through a grant by the Texas Skills Standards Board. As a TSSB-recognized program, open source will finally get the corporate and industrial exposure it deserves. We believe the program is the only one of its kind in the nation at the community college level. Our goal is to promote Open Source as a business philosophy and as a way of life rather than limiting the program to a few token OSS offerings. Among the courses to be offered: The Philosophy of Open Source, a series of LAMP courses, and a capstone course which will focus on OSS development practices. Courses will
be offered both on-line and on-campus."
In my opinion an associates in this holds much more value than a Microsoft Certified Professional certificate.
If universities dish out Bachelor of Science/Art degrees in Madonna Studies (the musician), golf course management, and pig enterprise management, one would hope that they'd jump on this.
Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
Do any educational institutions offer Open Source Professionalism courses? Such a course may be quite beneficial for many open source developers. While many developers are great programmers and designers, they often lack the public relations skills necessary for any serious project. It's not just about the communication skills with users, but also about projecting a solid, professional image.
More often than not we see instances of open source developers damaging the reputation and image of the projects they're involved with. Take the recent case of Novell's servers being vandalized. And then there was the recent incident of a KOffice developer publically insulting a KOffice user. Whatever the circumstances, the end result is that the product and community looks bad because of the lack of professionalism from even just a single individual.
That is why I suggest that many open source developers take a course on basic professionalism, if one is offered anywhere. Any large scale project requires developers who are polite, intelligent, respectable and well-spoken. The open source community has the capability to succeed beyond our wildest dreams if we as a group are able to master professionalism.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Likewise the person who makes a "decision" without having any knowledge of more than one option - in other words, an uninformed decision - is often doing great harm to the organization they saddle with that decision.
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