certification [was: Re: [Fsfe-uk] Intro and a request for information]

[Graham Seaman]

Ian Lynch wrote:

> If you want a FLOSS-freindly certification system that can be done
> alongside the National Curriculum with very little additional work for
> teachers take a look at www.theINGOTs.org and become an INGOT Academy.
> We will be using revenue derived to produce educational resources under
> creative commons licenses and supporting free software development.
>  
Talking of Ingots - every so often I've heard discussion of a 
non-ms-bound ECDL. But I can't find anything recent at all in English. 
All I've found is:

http://www.ecdl-linux.de/
German, can't understand enough to follow what's going on there - I have 
seen complaints in English that all that's available in reality in 
Germany is still MS based. Can anyone read this?

http://www.krea.hu/ecdl_linux.htm
Hungarian, understand zilch :-(

http://ecdl.linux.it/
Italian - developing materials for a 100% free software ECDL.

But have also found looking round regional Italian sites that councils 
are offering ECDLs with openoffice etc, and that a linux based ECDL has 
been recognised by Italian ECDL adminstrators AICA (similar to UK BCS?) 
- http://www.aicanet.it/ , although there are still complaints that the 
MS material is not totally avoidable.

Does anyone know what's going on in other European countries - or even 
better, anything going on here? The UK site - http://www.ecdl.co.uk/ - 
says 'ECDL is not restricted to Microsoft applications an  testing and 
training can be done on the Lotus suite of applications. A number of the 
automated test providers allow tests to be done using Lotus as well as 
Microsoft.' Which is not a lot of consolation.


Cheers
Graham