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On Wednesday 15th the Interim Board of the SELF Project came together in Amsterdam. Representatives from the Catalan Open University and from the Indian Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education came together at the Free Knowledge Institute to discuss the next steps. In short, the SELF Project has completed its EC-funded period, and a second phase lies ahead, where SELF is completely in the hands of the community. The Interim Board aims to encourage and guide the growth of the platform and the community.

The SELF Platform is a unique platform, which combines a wiki-like web environment for the collaborative construction with standards for online educational materials that can be imported and exported, with an innovative versioning system and framework for quality assessment. The platform is under continuous improvement, but contains already an initial set of course materials as can be seen at its front page and in the various collections.

As discussed during the FKFT Conference, SELF goes on as a community platform. The Interim Board has proposed the following aims and objectives for itself:

  • to bring together interested parties and users to facilitate mutual support for the exchange of educational materials and tools;
  • to foster the development and growth of educational materials and tools for the collaborative construction, distribution and use of free knowledge and free technology.
  • to raise awareness and contribute to the building of a critical mass for the use of Free Knowledge and Free Technology; as well as comprising all that which is directly associated with the above or may be conductive thereto, all of this in the broadest possible sense.

The Interim Board is composed of:

And although he is not in the Board, an important role is fulfilled by David Jacovkis, who is in charge of the server infrastructure. To advance the platform and the production of educational materials, help is needed. We are looking for people who can dedicate a few hours per week to participate in the development team, the production team, the learning materials team or communications team. Researchers who are interested in the innovative approach to quality assessment can participate in its review and further development.

After the Board meeting, some people from the Dutch community joined to discuss concrete actions. Work is done on improving performance issues, connecting new people and partners to the SELF teams and communicating the project and platform more clearly. If you want to participate in one of the teams or contribute in other ways to the community, contact us and/or bring forward your ideas on one of the mailinglists.

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