Scienceonline

A new series of online training on FOSS in Arabic and French starts today and inscriptions are open for registration. It has been set up by UNESCO’s Office in Rabat in cooperation with ISESCO, the association Tanmia.ma and the Moroccan Department of Post, Telecommunications and New Technologies.




The online courses will cover the functionalities of the following software: Mozilla Sunbird, Miranda IM, 7-Zip, Coolplayer, Clamwin and Sumatra PDF. The course materials were developed by Tanmia.ma, in cooperation with volunteers from the Ecole nationale supérieure d’informatique et d’analyse des systèmes (Morocco).

This new training is taking place in the framework of UNESCO’s activities aimed at promoting a network of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities in the Arab region. It completes the previously organized courses on the software provided by the “Miftaah” USB key.

“Miftaah” was developed by the Centre de recherche sur l’information scientifique et technique (Algeria), l'Ecole Mohammadia d’ingénieurs (Morocco) and the University of Birzeit (Palestine) in collaboration with the UNESCO office in Rabat and ICTIDAR. Not only does it contain a FOSS package, but it also provides a storage space for the users’ personal data and a customised and user-friendly interface ensuring the accessibility of its package in Arabic, English and French.

The first series of e-learning courses was put online in 2007 on a dedicated e-learning platform of Tanmia.ma. More than 239 students and members of local associations participated in the training courses on the following software: OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird and VLC player.