Students of the Friesland College ROC, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, section Interactive Design, were given the opportunity to take part in a Joomla CMS training program. The program started this week and will comprise seven sessions in total. For the first session the main learning goal was set as: "What is a CMS system?" This first session, in which fifteen persons participated, turned out to be a great succes!

A young Webdesign Company, Coco Nuts Hosting and Webdesign Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, has worked out a schedule for the total program, together with the teachers of this MBO (intermediate vocational education) school. They choose for Joomla 1.5.x for its good reputation and userfriendliness. The ultimate learning target for the full program is not just to know more about a CMS, but more fully: "how to construct your own portfolio within a Joomla 1.5.x CMS system environment, in order to represent yourself at school and eventually when you are ready to start hunting on the job market".

Intermediate learning steps are:
- understanding of open source and GPL;
- how to install Joomla on a local system and on the web;
- the power of templates;
- understanding of 'help members' in the community and finding other community help members;
- what can you find on the Joomla site, like extensions, the developers part, the forum, the shop and the power of the news on Joomla.org.
- why also a student can be of great support to the Joomla community, so why we need to support Joomla, with time or donations;

At the end of the first session, the group, both students and teachers, was already deeply impressed about Joomla. They would rather have liked to stay on and learn more. The Joomla virus was injected with success! So... next time, next session, much more!

Students site (Friesland College ROC) : www3.fcroc.nl
Coco Nuts Webdesign site: www.coconutswebdesign.nl