At the end of November 2007, Canonical will launch the first official Ubuntu desktop training courses.
There will be two courses – one instructor led, two days in a classroom and the other will be a web based e-learning format, following the same contents as the instructor led. The material for the instructor led course will be freely available on the Ubuntu wiki for all to use, share, improve and translate.
The e-learning format will be a paid-for service. The focus of both courses will be very much to comfort and reassure people (new users) that moving from MS to Ubuntu is no big deal; this will be a ‘comfort blanket’ course.
We really really want community involvement to make this course as fantastic as can be. As such, we are setting up a new Ubuntu training community team. What we were thinking of is basically a working model whereby:
- We have a training content company write the content.
- Community and Canonical provide input at various stages of development.
- Content people implement changes.
- Once courses are finished, they’re loaded onto the wiki for general use and abuse.
- Three months before next Ubuntu release, we review the content and decide which elements need to be included in the next version etc.
We will be using DocBook to design and write the content. One word of caution is that this project will be deadline driven – cut off points for feedback will be absolute in order for us to be able to meet the November target date.
How does that sound? If you are interested in being a member of this team, as the first kick off point, please head over to http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Training/DesktopCourseFeedback and follow the instructions to offer your feedback on the proposed Table Of Contents.
See you there!