"Who are you, where are you from, what are you interested in? These are
all good things to cover."
My name is Tom Goldie, and I am from, and live in, Arizona. I am an
educator by trade.
My interest in this list and this community is as follows: I currently
teach inmates in a large (3500 men) prison -- 75 at any one time -- how
to use OpenOffice. I use it, love it, and share what I know wherever I
can. My motto: "Friends don't send friends document it will cost them
hundreds of dollars to open."
We have one problem: we don't have any recognized standards to teach to.
Sure, we have come up with what WE think is important, but we're looking
for something that guys can feel good about earning and that will tell
potential employers what they are likely to know.
Here's what I'm offering: my "expertise", such as it is, and a whole lot
of prison labor (voluntary, you can be assured) to flesh-out and test
standards and curriculum materials to form the basis for an OpenOffice
Certification. I believe the approach I'm suggesting is different and
more easily completed because it is driven by produced documents --
which brings into ready and sharp focus requisite skills and thought
processes.
Here's the idea so far, with some sketching-in in a few places to give
you an idea of how it would go together:
1) OpenOffice users across the globe are asked, "What documents is it
important to know how to make?" Of course, depending on experience the
responses will be varied, but perhaps it begins to shape up as follows:
Writer -- business and personal letters, shopping lists, mailmerge
letters, academic papers (MLA in the US, not sure about elsewhere),
memos, newsletters, etc.
Calc -- inventory sheet, payroll calculation, balance sheet, budget -- I
KNOW there is a lot of variety out there, but perhaps representative
sheets with common functions and can be settled on
Draw -- line and block organization chart, simple product illustration,
landscape scene with imported bitmaps, artistic rendering of automobile,
whatever.
Note that Impress, Base, Math,and Basic are left out for now -- but not
forgotten.
2. We (a working group of me and interested people from this community)
gather from all over the globe .pdfs of each of these documents and
their specifications. We decide which document elements are signature,
come up with different levels of elegance of handling them, and then
assign documents and methods to certain levels.
Some sketching here is in order: Let's take letters. There are business
and personal letters. We can say what SHOULD NOT be done (hard returns
at the end of lines), but also say that adding paragraph markers for
above/below paragraph spacing is a beginner-level technique (and
students should be aware of the pitfalls), but creating and applying a
paragraph style is an intermediate-level technique. Instruction can be
provided for creating common elements: page numbering, dates, alignments
and indents, margins, and such -- which will be determined by looking
over user submissions. The student passes the letter portion at either
basic or intermediate level when they avoid all the don'ts, and then
apply the appropriate techniques.
This is done for each type of common document for each facet of OO. More
difficult documents (say, books, or long academic papers -- things that
require tweaks for headers, bookmarks, cross-references, etc.) are in
the advanced section.
For Impress, it is pretty easy to figure out what are basic tasks
(transitions, animations), intermediate tasks (more complicated
animations and timing, making groovy slide masters), and advanced topics
(printing handouts, notes, etc.).
For Base, beginners should be able to navigate a database, view data
using filters and sort, perform queries, use forms, enter data in tables
and forms, run reports with parameterized queries, etc. Intermediate
users should be able to design/write queries, design tables, make forms,
make reports, etc. Advanced users write code to make their forms more
functional -- probably intersects with Basic (see below).
For Math, symbols are divided into groups (up through high school
algebra for basic -- I know there will be variety by country, but there
should be some common ground), common college stuff for intermediate,
and specialized notations for advanced.
For Basic, beginners should be able to import/export code, insert macro
code, maybe write simple macros for a spreadsheet; intermediate level
should be able to make dialogs, and pass info back and forth between
code and dialogs, write apps; advanced use UNO objects to manipulate
dbs, text docs, draw objects, etc.
3. Our guys produce learning materials and release them under a Creative
Commons SSA (or other license, if this community has a preference) to be
used by anyone wishing to deliver training in OpenOffice for little or
no cost. (If someone wants to issue certificates and oversee testing
quality for a small fee, I can suggest a certain customer with 3500
possible clients ;-)
OKAY, so this is a lot of going on about something most will delete. BUT
if you want to help and have ideas, I'd like to hear from you. I've sent
e-mails to the OO cert group addresses, but it all came back
undeliverable. I have to do this to keep my company happy, but I'd like
to have broad input to make the final product as relevant and as useful
as possible.
I look forward to finding helpful folks with a common interest. If
that's not you, thanks for indulging me by reading this far and I'd
appreciate you forwarding this to anyone you think might be interested.
If it IS you, I hope that what I've laid out excites you and we can get
started ASAP. I've got a lot of resources to offer to get this done, but
need your input.
Thanks,
Tom Goldie
tomgol...@yahoo.com
Instructor, Arizona State Prison - Kingman
