Ubuntu Certified Professionals

[email.listen at googlemail.com]

Am Fri, 7. April 2006 22:45 schrieb Daniel Carrera:
> email.listen at googlemail.com wrote:
> >>LPI candidates are free to get their knowledge anyway they want - old
> >>timers got it from man pages and mailing lists, newbies might want to
> >>attend a formal course. Both are OK. If you want to organize a
> >>LUG-style after hours class to teach stuff, you can go right ahead
> >>and do it - in fact you are encouraged to do so. You can deliver a
> >>course in a classroom, over the web or any other way you think would
> >>work for you and your students. You can teach it in any order you
> >>like and take as long as you want, you can offer any kind of
> >>preparation, assessment and practice tests you think are appropriate,
> >>and no-one can tell you otherwise.
> >
> > And thats just what I'm talking about.
> > It don't matter if you are skilled or just learned a lot of questions for
> > a test (what I like to call a braindump test)
>
> So, what you call a "braindump" test is a test that evaluates skills but
> does not force the pupil to follow a particular course?

Not exactly.
To say it once again, tests like LPI exams don't examine skills thei only 
examine if someone is able to learn a bunch of answers to given questions.
What is needed is a 'examination' or consideration how the skills are 
achieved. 

This can be done in the classic school way by visiting classes or courses.

Another way would be a community driven selfexamination under given rules by a 
group of people who are in the position to judge the knowledge and the win of 
knowledge of each other. What would be a model which may be used for 
selfstudy groups.


> I think it's a bit narrow-minded to suggest that the only way to acquire
> knowledge is to take a course with a test at the end. I think that
> certificating for actual knowledge and skills is the better way to go
> because that tests what really matters, that is, whether you have the
> knowledge or not. How the knowledge was acquired is simply not important.

Its just the other way round.
Not an exam judges a skill but the way how this skills where achieved. 
If we would have a only exam oriented educational system there would be no 
need for schools anymore. Following what you just mentioned would be a system 
whithout any schools. Everyone is free to choose how he will achieve an exam 
and only this exam is what prooves the skills. 
May be this makes it a bit clearer what I wanted to say?

Courses is one way how skills can be learned. 
As I mentioned self study groups are another way.
The big advantage of those groups is that they offer a high potential of 
motivation for futher involvement, may be in such a project or in other ways, 
e.g. in participating doing propper documentation for the community.

What I'm talking about is education on one side (done in courses, classes or 
self study groups) and examination only on the other which stands for LPI.


> > I'm just mentioned that supporting another LPI examination will be
> > desastrous and contraproductive in the end.
>
> I don't understand how that's supposed to happen. 
Amazing, you just wiped out my explanation i gave in my posting.
So I have to say it again:

"But for this you may ask other people from germany who must see most high 
rated and well known education institutes passing away over the last ten 
years and this because of the acceptance of this stupid braindump tests, 
MCSE, ..., and LPI."

So to say it once again ;)

"What I'm talking about is education on one hand (done in courses, classes or 
self study groups, ...) and examination only on the other which stands for 
LPI."

"If we would have only exam oriented educational systems there would be no 
need for schools anymore. Following what you just mentioned would be a system 
whithout any schools. Everyone is free to choose how he will achieve an exam 
and only this exam is what prooves the personal skills."


> I think that having an Ubuntu qualification is a good thing. Heck, I'd love 
it if my company
> did an end-user qualification for Ubuntu!
>
> > What I was talking about is a community driven strategy/system which
> > scopes the education from a novice (a private users) point of view up to
> > a professional training and examination. As high as an university degree
> > if offered.
>
> I don't know what you mean by this.

What I see now are several attempts which will (most probably) lead into the 
well known hirarchical training / education systems. And therefore I was 
talking about the barriers which will result from this. The gap between a 
novice education and the professional one is too big and will result in the 
loss of mobilization of manpower.


> > What you mentioned as 'Channel Partner Program' again is a shortsighted
> > way because ther is a gap between this professional training offers and
> > no training offers/structures for private or novice users.
> > What you will loose by doing so is the chance to have a tremendous
> > motivational argument to involve the community in many ways.
> > It is again a gradet system which has big gaps (better hurdles) between
> > the diferent grades. It will again be a manifestation of barriers in
> > education.
>
> I'm sorry, I really don't see what problems you are talking about. What
> gap are you talking about? I really don't understand you.

My intention is not pledging against an exam and a professional training but 
for a strategy which will allow everyone to find his place for participation 
in the end. E.G. by having self study groups which will be the base for 
further training or education on a higher level. 

May be a native english speaker from the field of education science / 
pedagogics may explain this better than I do, my poor english. *grumbl*

regards,
Thomas