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School Software Licenses Under Review

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the excuses-to-sit-in-a-circle-and-spend-money dept.

Tony writes "ZDNet asks the question: 'Does Microsoft Campus give good value for money?' Its good to see a review of the dominant software, but the review is likely to lead to no or little changes, so the real question would be 'Is the review worth the money being spent on it?'."

6 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Don't usually complain but... by kisielk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Alright, I've been a Slashdot reader for many years now, and I've yet to ever complain about a story, even the blatant Slashvertisements. Usually I just ignore them. However, this story is probably the most useless thing I've seen posted here. I mean, honestly, the article has about 0 actual substance to it, all it says is that a review will be conducted. What is there to even discuss, as no facts are presented yet? Alright.. back to my hole...

  2. So many ways to measure value by svunt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Can you imagine a graphic design school that didn't own a Mac? As much as it displeases me, schools aren't really in the same position as businesses & individuals when it comes time to evaluate software choices. The reality is that Windows is 'industry standard', as is Office, for the bulk of jobs that students will end up wotrking at. Most students with their own computers also run Windows/Office, and need some interoperability. It's not really as simple as measuring costs, support, productivity. Which sucks.

    1. Re:So many ways to measure value by RJabelman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The reality is that Windows is 'industry standard', as is Office, for the bulk of jobs that students will end up wotrking at

      This has nothing to do with anything. If you used a computer in school, how similar was it to the one you use for your job today? When I was at school we used Acorn Archimedes....

  3. Deceptive advertising by pubjames · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One thing that annoys me about this subject is the deliberately misleading Microsoft advertisements aimed at parents. The ones that imply, for instance, that Microsoft software helps children become creative musicians, when Microsoft doesn't have any music creation applications.

    I find it really outrageous that (in the UK at least) a big chunk of many schools IT budget goes towards Windows and Office, which are completely rubbish peices of software for educating young children. But the administrators don't understand much about computers, and the nice man from Microsoft is always taking them out to lunch, being helpful and giving them "special deals" which just happen to take up most of the IT budget...

    1. Re:Deceptive advertising by rolfwind · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's especially outrageous for Office, as that is an application that can be completely replaced by OpenOffice.

      The usual arguments against OpenOffice don't work in a school. It isn't a business and doesn't have to work 100% with MS Office, because schools are usually self-contained. Documents are internal and they don't have a ton of "clients" and what not where they would have to import documents in or out all day.

      And if you start using OO, you might as well use Linux/BSD/Other free OS.

      There may be a few objections:

      1. Educational software isn't written for linux. Too true, but most educational software I have seen is crap anyway, seemingly bought just to have it rather than providing any tangible benefit to the students. Usually the areas are covered by good web applications anyway in the meantime so there are alternatives.

      2. Teacher tools. True, I have seen some teacher tools in Windows but they have web application equivalents as well. The thing that can go wrong here is if the web apps use Windows, but as in many things, there are choices.

  4. Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school... by vtcodger · · Score: 4, Insightful
    As a retired US school IT guy let me say that there are several issues here: One is operating system. Another is other products -- mostly office suite. A third is standardized reports.

    The OS is fairly clear cut. A school in the US simply has to be able to run MSDOS and Windows software. There are 20 years plus of legacy 'stuff' out there that are important to the school -- attendance, grades, stupid bureacratic reports, standardized test scoring, Mario Teaches Typing, etc. They often run only on MS operating systems (and it is often a struggle to get them to run there). There may come a time in the not too distant future when Macs and Linux will run this stuff routinely via emulation or WINE. Great -- but that's not today. In addition, in many countries a copy of Windows must purchased with the machine notwithstanding that is a clear violation of the most basic antitrust principles.

    Office Suite products are a different issue. Power Point a pretty good product. Schools need it or something like it. Count it as a plus for Microsoft. Word and Excel OTOH are far too damn complicated for most educational uses. (If you ask me, they are far too damn complicated for most non-educational uses also). Can I use them? Sure. Do I use them? Hardly ever. I Don't do chainsaws either for much the same reason. Should a school have a couple of copies of MSOFFICE or a decent clone around? Absolutely. Should every student and staff member have a copy? That's nuts -- but in more school districts than not, they probably do.

    A third issue is the unending reports demanded by the educational bureacracy. Attendance information. Number of reduced price lunches served -- by day. Number of playground swine and wild animal attacks broken down by grade. You name it, there's a report. Most of these come in the form of computer programs that attempt to make life easier for the reporter. Their distinguishing characteristics -- be they Excel Spreadsheets, Access, Web forms or whatever -- are that they all demand the latest technologies, they never (I repeat, never) actually work right without tweaking, and their support people are often quite clueless. For whatever reason, school IT people (who are pretty smart, but are often terrible at strategic decisionmaking) are unwilling to tackle this mess although it could probably be resolved without all that much difficulty. Until it is, schools need at least a few up to date Microsoft systems to accomodate the lunatics who think -- against all evidence to the contrary -- that Access or Excel -- are satisfactory tools for data collection.

    --
    You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey