ADBi Distance Learning Courses: For FREE!

This is what I am talking about.

I took a course (again free!) called Online Community Information Services early this year and I gained a lot of insights. It covers mostly best practices and projects from all over Asia, including the Philippines. The deal is they send you the lectrue discs in VCD or DVD format and you just go through them at your own pace.

Then, you send through email or through the Learning Management System (LMS) the required papers/projects/assigments. And no surprise here: they are using Moodle! There is also the forum and the Admin/Facilitator, who was by the way very helpful and accomodating.

Now, I've applied to another course and hopefully get accepted.

Here are the details:

ADBi is offering a distance learning course on

eLearning Policies
16 October – 12 January 2006

E-Business Strategies
23 November 2006- – 23 February 2007


Go to this link:

http://www.adbi-classroom.org/dlcnew/index_u.php

I also plan to apply to the E-Business Strategy course, though it is still a few months away. My foucs now is on eLearning Policies, which is perfect timing for a program I am planning to propose early next year to my boss.

If you are interested, just go to http://www.adbi-classroom.org/dlcnew/index_u.php. Would PeLS members be intersted in this, specially the new ones (I've sent them an email too)?

And maybe, I'll be able to get in touch with ADB movers who will fund my idea of a Free eLearning School.

I think I just made One Step Forward.

The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Bill

I originally posted on this bit of good news yesterday.

This morning, I woke up and found insights from the blogging community.

Chin Wong was given a draft of the bill. Get the pdf here. He continues to report on it here.

Monsolo has read the bill and provided incisive comments. Read here.

A post in the gov.ph forum talks about it here.

We hope this bill gets a priority mark in congress. We will continue to montor the developments closely in this blog.

Open-Source Bill

Mike Abundo posted in PinoyTechBlog some good news toward Free eLearning. Teddy Casino, a party-list representative, is set to file the Open Source Bill. Read and comment on the post here.

Free eLearning is interested in the developments with this bill because our platform of choice is Moodle, open-source and free.

Once this becomes a law, LAMP, (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) could get a foothold in the computers of public schools, and of course OpenOffice.org. Moodle heart LAMP!

Paging PLUG, Bayanihan Linux and open-source advocates, users, bloggers and movers. Blog about the bill and spread the word.

Now where could I get a draft of the bill?

High-Tech Digital Microsoft High School

Will the schools of the future look like this?

High-tech, digital and patterned after Microsoft-management-style.... It's a dream come true. Bill Gates has called US high schools "obsolete"... WIll this be the new high school?

Students are called Learners; teachers - Educators. Good start.

What curriculum will they follow? What part of the system constitutes eLearning?

This is something worth following.

Free eLearning Resources

It has been a while since I did a search on eLearning resources. It was actually prompted by a response in a forum by Dr. Raffy Managhaya of Little Candle, currently head honcho of Philippine eLearning Society (of which I am a member). I was actually looking at Elgg, a relatively new eLearning tool and other free or open source tools.

I came upon this link and it was too good to pass up. Some free SQL Server 2005 training for 90 days. Check it out here.