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Application-Centricity in Our Schools?
bccomm asks: "Here on Slashdot, we continually hear about new successes in bringing free software closer to the desktop. What about schools? I am a student and was once asked to redo an entire presentation because I had used Prosper instead of PowerPoint. The explanation I received from him was 'the curriculum says I'm supposed to teach Word, PowerPoint, etc, not word processing and presentations.' How is this for irony: presentation has to be about volunteer work/hobbies, and I chose to show that my computer runs a daily NetBSD snapshot. I think it just lost some effectiveness. Is anyone else bothered by this?"
... as stupid as this sounds, if the project were to be done using Word and Powerpoint about your hobbies, you should have at least made the attempt to make it look like you did it on Word and Powerpoint, regardless of your personal viewpoints. The easiest would have been to put it in an MS compatible format when you were doing it so that you could display and turn in what you had to in a form that the teacher would have liked. Being an ex-tutor, there were some stupid things I had to adhere by and one of them was that all electronic documents had to be in an MS readable format for some of the courses (they were A+, Net+, and MCSE courses). Now, being the Linux tutor also, when it came time for things to be done at home (research, projects, etc) the only thing my students had to adhere to was keeping the documents in MS readable formats so that other tutors could review if necessary. This kept everyone happy as they got to work in what they wanted (Linux, BSD, OS/2, Winwhatever, etc) and still kept with course guidelines.
CliffH
sigs are like a box of chocolates, they all suck remove the underscores to email me
In my line of work no one cares if you used power point, or a pointy stick and little dots of colored ink on a membrane of transparent plastic to make a presentation. The end result is what matters. Often you get the idiots that ask "Hey, this dinner was great! You must use really great pots and pans!" Those in education must learn to make their corsework reflect the needs of the real world. Whatever the best tool is for the job, that's what needs to be used. Be it a Micro$oft product or opensource...who cares, as long as the results are what the customer wants. PERIOD.
This guy (assuming a guy) should be praised for using the tools at hand to get the job done. PERIOD.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
So, let me get this straight, you run BSD, and you need to take a class on how to use PowerPoint? Are you some kind of idiot savant, leet enough to grok the command line, but with a crippling mental block that keeps you from being able to intuit your way through what 99% of computerdom considers an easily guessable user interface?
Many opinionated people would say, perhaps prejudicially, that the job of any teaching institution that is not explicitly a vocational/technical training program is to teach principles and not isolated methods; that a good curriculum implements goals which could be accomplished to equal effect with many different tools; that in the rapidly changing landscape of the computer world, such a teaching approach is the only one that's likely to have any serious long-term benefit to students; and that the presence or absence in the curriculum of restrictions to specific applications, OSes, and programming languages is actually good indicator of the quality of a program.
As it happens, I am such a person. Give these bozos hell.
Yeah, and I wish my neighbors would clean up after their dogs, too.
It's hard to know what to make of your particular issue, since you left out such details as what the subject of the class is. But even giving you the full benefit of the doubt -- there are going to be things in life that are done in a less than optimal way, and your needing to do a presentation in a perfectly appropriate application instead of some new thing you found on Sourceforge is hardly the worst case you'll encounter.
Just be glad they didn't make you do it in Excel.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Remember WordPerfect? Actually when I was a kid it was WordStar, but I never used it, since we had Apple 2s in school, and Atari (400) at home. Whatever word processer those systems used is what I used, when I wasn't useing pen and paper.
By the time I reached high school they were braging about the computer labs which taught WordPerfect 5.1, which was exactly what industry was using.
Then came college and MSWord was on all the non-unix systems. I used that when I had to. More often I used Emacs, or when I needed something more complex FrameMaker was on the Unix systems, and I generally spent most of my time writing programs for Unix so I was on them anyway.
Then I got into the real world and I only had an X terminal on my desk so it was FrameMaker. Eventially they switched us to Outlook for email, but it was done via Citrix, and Word was avaiable there. There I mostly used either whatever was built into the tools we used (a code generation package) or ed. (yes ed, when you telnet to a system without curses you use ed)
At the next job it was gvim on windows. I had MSWord though, and sometimes had to use it. Standard was to export everything to rtf before distribution, though I'm the onlyone who actually did that. Likely as close to the real world as I've ever been.
Today I'm unemployed (though I might be called back to the last job if they find more money). I don't have MSWord, and see no reason to buy it. I have kWord and it works great. I have vi, and it works fine. I also have emacs, though I haven't touched it in a long time, and OpenOffice which I just installed cause some potential employer sent me a word document.
In short, they will make you learn something. Learn it because that is what you have to work with. In the real world exactly what you use will change, so be ready to learn new things.
I found that in High School, doing better work that required independent thought even though it was not assigned was, in almost every case, not understood and often treated critically.
Absolutely. In a much earlier incarnation, I taught Freshman Comp. at a Pac-10 university. It was easy to tell that what little instruction the majority of students had received on writing in HS was a prescriptive set of rules to follow that led to a standard form. When handed assignments that required critical thought (i.e. pretty much everything they'd be getting in many college courses) that would not be well served by following their formulaic rules, they fell flat on their face.
All too much of the class was spent getting them to unlearn much of the indoctrination they had received.
The exceptions were notable. I actually talked with some of them about this and found that most of the exceptions weren't exceptional because they were brilliant but because their HS did not teach the way most did. These kids were coming in with a leg up on their peers because their HS training had actually encouraged critical thinking and the ability to express it coherently. My guess is that many of those differences smoothed out after a year or so of college, but I'm pretty sure that these kids came out with higher GPAs and ultimately better job prospects because of the quality of their HS instruction.
In case you couldn't guess, I do find the situation described by bccomm deplorable. However, I will also offer some advice that I used to offer my students in freshman comp. Learn how to read your teacher and pick your battles. Bccomm is going to have a much better insight as to whether this a battle that is winnable and what effort that might require. If it isn't worth it move on. More importantly is learning how to read your instructors. If this teacher is the kind of idiot who can't recognize and reward independent thought and effort, then give him the minimal effort to turn in the dross that he thinks is important. When you find the kind of instructor who will challenge you to push your boundaries and actually learn something, go for it. Take advantage of it, and realize that often these types of teachers will grade more leniently for someone who aims high and fails than for someone who underacheives with sufficient work.
And, no, it is not that way in the 'real' world where results are primarily what matters. But, HS should not be aiming for a 'real' world simulation.
I think you're missing the point of the class.
More than likely, the class is to help people with average or below average computer skills to survive in an institution of higher education. For instance...lot's of people came to my school, majored in Computer Science/Engineering, and had never written a line of code in their lives. Many had never, or very seldom, used a word processor or more commonly they hadn't used presentation (PP) or spreadsheet (Excel) apps. Every paper and most of the homework was required to be typed up or presented in an attractive, business like format. How does someone learn to do this when they're from south western Virginia and their high school is still using outdated Apples? Windows dumbfounded these people, let alone Word.
It was a running joke at Tech that if you didn't come into the CS curriculum with some programming experience, you wouldn't make it out. That's because they completely skip introduction to computers ("101 - This is a mouse") and go straight to programming. Great for some of us, horrible for others.
When the majority of your work is expected to come in some format, that format should be taught to you in your first semester. Since not everyone's first semester is the same, a single class presented when first entering college would be a good idea. Make it a 0 credit survey class or something, but still offer it so you aren't failing people for lame reasons like not knowing Word.
--trb