School Software Licenses Under Review

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?'."

Comments

As an IT manager in a UK primary school...

[TehHustler]

...I can answer that question.

No.

Most of the Local Educational Authorities are in bed with Microsoft. Schools are free to do their own thing if they require, but doing so means you lose out on perks from the LEA such as other free software and support.

It is much easier for them if all the schools are running the same kit and software because it means they can all support things much easier (think IT helpdesks who are knowledgable in JUST the disciplines they need) and it helps them secure bulk deals. And even then, the savings aren't that great.

Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school...

[TubHarsh]

It is much easier for them if all the schools are running the same kit
I would agree that it is much easier to support if all schools are running the same, but if they have to neglect other software concerns such as security, they should consider switching.

In some colleges and universities in the US (which are also mostly in bed with Microsoft), IT managaers are switching pre installed web browsers on college ownewd computers to Firefox.

In a few instances like Pennsylvania State Univ. telling Students to chuck IE, the school can even influence which software the students use.

If the IT owners at these schools see a tangible benefit to switching from a Microsoft Product to a non-Microsoft Product they will do so.

Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school...

[Mad Merlin]

But by switching they neglect great deals like a free porche bundled with purchase of a million licenses. As long as OSS can't give out free porches as bonus to government-funded purchases, we're on a lost position.

So... take the money you didn't spend on a million software licenses, and buy a couple thousand Porches? I fail to see how buying proprietary software works out for the better here.

Maybe if I sell you a copy of RHEL 4 for $200,000 and throw in a free Porche, would that make it better?

Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school...

[jimicus]

The way it works in a lot of public sector organisations (schools in particular) is the person who spends the money (and therefore decides what to spend it on) is quite often not the person who has to deal with any fall-out.

Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school...

[vtcodger]

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.

Re:As an IT manager in a UK primary school...

[vtcodger]

Actually, I agree. ***BUT*** Elementary and Middle School students and staff don't need Excel. Virtually any spreadsheet that doesn't produce incorrect answers will satisfy 99.98% of their needs -- which are minimal because few people will actually use a spreadsheet to do even simple tasks ... even if they have been trained in how to use them. The School District CFO may need a copy of Excel as may the school clerks since there seems to be no way to keep people from trying to use Excel as a data collection tool. There may even be the odd teacher and student who can benefit from Excel. By all means give it to those who need it. But for the most part, any freeware spreadsheet will do everything that normal people need.

BTW, are you aware that clipboard in Excel works differently than other Windows programs? That's because Microsoft ported Excel and its programmers from the Macintosh, and these folks (who for some unknowable reason are very proud of their user interface) never bothered to bring the clipboard into compliance with the IBM CUA conventions that are used in other Windows software. I expect that the reason that this has never become an issue is not that the Excel user interface is brilliantly designed. It's because very few people actually use the thing.

In five years in a school, I only ever saw Excel actually used by the CFO; the school clerk (for some data collection efforts); in a short unit to teach grade 7-8 students what a spreadsheet is (It reduced students to tears, appallingly often); The staff in a (largely unsuccesful) attempt to automate supply purchasing (Excel really wasn't the right tool); and by the gym teacher who had kids enter their race times after they finished running. Only the first and last efforts really seemed viable. Oh yeah, and I used it occasionally to straighten out data bases and generate specialized reports because it may be a lousy data base manager, but it looks a lot better when your other alternative is Access.

Don't usually complain but...

[kisielk]

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...

Re:Don't usually complain but...

[Anonymous Coward]

You claim to be a Slashdot reader, but first you actually read the article, and then you can't think of anything to discuss on the subject of whether Microsoft software is worth the money?

You're no Slashdotter. Get back to Technocrat and leave us to our childish flamewars.

Re:Don't usually complain but...

[honkycat]

I've got to agree with you on this one. The net content of this article was that somebody is going to do a study. Ok, great. It'll be news when the study is done and tells us something interesting. This story isn't even interesting for the debate it will spark on slashdot itself -- it's just begging for a flamewar. Can we mod the story down flamebait? (or off-topic, as we'll surely be modded...)

You Godless Commie Pinko Bastard!

[Anonymous Coward]

Trying to deprive the children! They needClippy to show 'em what's good and right and true in this heathanistic world. I spit on you and your goat.

So many ways to measure value

[svunt]

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.

Re:So many ways to measure value

[RJabelman]

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....

Re:So many ways to measure value

[BenjyD]

Archimedes! We considered ourselves lucky if we got to use the BBC Master. I think UK state schools were the only people to ever use the Archimedes.

Re:So many ways to measure value

[hey!]

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.

If so, they are grossly misrepresenting and overcharging for what they do.

Colleges and Universities represent themselves as more than trade schools. Trade schools have a narrower focus on imparting specific technical skills. Colleges granting baccalaureate degree are supposedly giving a broader education in higher intellectual skills. If I get a certificate from a non-accredited trade school, I don't expect that certificate to carry any weight ten years from now. If I get a degree in, say, Computer Science, I expect that degree and the skills I learned there to last all my life. Therefore, colleges charge a heck of a lot more.

If what they are teaching you is to use some office package, and if those skills aren't useful if you get a job at a place using a different operating system or office package, you're getting fleeced. A university education is supposed to be a lifetime investment. It is certain that the operating systems and office packages you will be using ten or twenty years in the future will be radically different than what is available today.

Re:So many ways to measure value

[releppes]

I agree. The excuse of training individuals on a platform said to be an industry standard is weak. Microsoft has changed their own products so much in the past 5 years alone. Most training on said platform would most likely be obsolete by the time they graduate anyway. Unfortunately, that's the problem with most IT training. Schools should stick to the basics. Teach students how to use a mouse or pointing device. Educate them on what an operating system is. Show them some basic applications. Show them which applications are used for which jobs. I don't want to see any more stupid databases created in Excell. Show them what a spreadsheet is REALLY used for. Database design should be concidered a basic skill. None of the above is Microsoft specific, but if a student had a solid understanding of what an operating system is and how to use most common applications, I'm sure they would be just as proficient as any seasoned Microsoft user.

CS

[FullMetalAlchemist]

I don't know, but the university I went to was excellent when it came to pure computer science; it was a UltraSPARC/Solaris only when I started there in the 90's. Those of us who actually passed all the courses where Amiga or BSD users, who loved the Solaris environment and its technical benefits.

But the fact is, when I entered the consulting biz I had very little use for CS. Everything is done half-assed, if at all, and real science was nowhere to be found.

Now, I just switched job and have gone the Microsoft route, and stangely, the quality of work is much better. Simply because you can still to things "quick and dirty" and manage to produce some quite acceptable results.

Thus, if your goal is science (a PhD or similar) a Solaris/UNIX shop is the way to go, especially today with OpenSolaris. But if you're going to work in tha' biz, Microsoft is where it's at.

I still miss the good old days, but clients wont pay for quality unless its billions in cash at stake or a great possibility that people can die if something goes wrong (which is essentially the same thing to an enterprise).

I still run BSD at home, but I'm glad I can work with MS software as it stands.

Mein Gott

[The Bungi]

What a stunning, in-depth analysis of this ever-delicate issue. I'm back from reading the first two chapters, which seemed to go on and on, yet nonetheless were completely absorbing. Tomorrow I shall read the other nine, with a good cup of joe and some trail mix to keep me in top form. This is certainly one where we'll be calling "RTFA" for days to come!

Certainly my heartfelt gratitude go out to the Slashdot crew - especially ScuttleMonkey, bless his heart - for linking to such an enthralling tome of uncompromising educational policy.

Deceptive advertising

[pubjames]

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...

Re:Deceptive advertising

[pimpimpim]

The ones that imply, for instance, that Microsoft software helps children become creative musicians, when Microsoft doesn't have any music creation applications.

I beg to differ.

P.S. Some explanation on how that was made can be found here.

Re:Deceptive advertising

[lukas84]

See, the problem is much more complicated than that.

(Disclaimer: This is the situation in switzerland)

Schools can't afford to hire qualified personal. A qualified System Administrator costs something from 6-10k per Month (x13). This is A LOT of money for a school.

Also, professional IT doesn't come cheap, and you usually have several software requirements. It's next to impossible for a "normal" School to get professionally supported (NBD Replacement for 3-5 years, Beige Boxes are NOT ACCEPTABLE) Machines without Windows licenses, so it would be a waste not to use them.

OTOH, microsoft offers significant discount for its software to schools. So it might be a lot cheaper to use a microsoft environment, because microsoft environments don't have compatibility problems which might necessitate the use of vmware, or sometimes even a windows terminal server.

Don't forget that a school usually consists of TWO different infrastructures. A smaller one for all the internal administration stuff, which most of the times REQUIRES windows, because of the ERP or Archival Software used, and a learning network. The latter COULD be setup using linux, but it would require additional infrastructure, which would in turn cost more money.

This is also the reason why most schools don't have a professional it at all. Setting up a windows environment is usually less complicated, but still, qualified windows personal is still rare and expensive.

Re:Deceptive advertising

[rolfwind]

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.

Re:Deceptive advertising

[joe 155]

I have to agree with you; I'm at uni at the mo so I've been in education for about the last 15 years, and with the exception of a crazily old BBC computer or whatever it was I've never seen anything but windows. When your younger I guess you don't tend to notice it as much but I really wish they'd at least given us some ability to use other systems. At uni I recently started a flame war(unintentionally) through my blog because I dared to suggest that our uni might use OO and Linux and other free software. Tellingly I got one reply (from a woman) who said that females don't know how to use computers as well as men so its unreasonable to expect them to learn... which is bullshit, but it gives you some idea of what your up against.

These are views which I saw replicated over and over, "it's too hard to learn" "I don't want to learn" "OMG!!!1 MS is teh best!!111!!!". In order to make any change you have to first get to these people, a ground up change.

Re:Deceptive advertising

[artifex2004]

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 is the interface the same, so that when kids graduate and go to office jobs, they will know how to use the office suite which is most likely to be installed on their work machines? If not, then it's as if they used Wordperfect Office or some other proprietary package with minority share: good to learn general skills, perhaps, but they can't hit the ground running. Which means the business either has to train them at least a little, which costs money and time, or just hire the graduates who used their parents' copies.

Re:Deceptive advertising

[A Dafa Disciple]

Man, that flash video tickles me pink. It reminds me of the time when my family's computer (a Packard Bell 386) had a "talking calculator" application. I found the .WAV files for the numbers it spoke and then I used Sound Recorder to cut off the consonant and vowel sounds and saved them to their own separate .WAV files. I then used those to make my own words. Being the juvenile I was, probably around age 10 or 12 at the time, you bet that the first words I made were, of course, curse words.

You can imagine how overjoyed my father was to turn on the computer and also hear that, rather than the computer greeting him with the usual Windows chime, it was cursing at him.

Re:Deceptive advertising

[Arivia]

My school board did that: http://slashdot.org/articles/04/06/08/0328257.shtm l?tid=102&tid=146&tid=185&tid=187&tid=99

They licensed it in 2004, and it made it into the 2005 updates to school IT infrastructure.

You know how many times I've seen it used?

Once.

You know why?

Because as a TA for a Writer's Craft class, the final assignment I created necessitated using the PDF export features that StarOffice had and MS Word did not.

I spent at least six hours that semester helping students fix formatting problems that had occured in the transition using nothing more complex than page breaks.

Mind share does not correlate to market share; in this case, despite the installed alternative, the students stuck to what they knew best, which is Microsoft Office.

Re:Deceptive advertising

[Macthorpe]

It's not there to educate people, it's there as an assistant to educators (word processing, slideshows, etc.)

Surprisingly enough, most people are aware that Microsoft Office can't educate kids on it's own, just like guns can't kill people unless someone pulls the trigger.

That's funny...

[Wordplay]

so the real question would be 'Is the review worth the money being spent on it?'.

Usually when I wonder this, it's referring to PC Magazine.

Don't bet on this being a foregone conclusion

[AYeomans]

Becta are favourable to Open Source and open standards too. See their Technical Specifications document which, for example, requires text documents to be held as .txt, .rtf or .odt but NOT .doc.
See also Open Source Software in Schools: A case study report, Open Source Software in Schools: A study of the spectrum of use and related ICT infrastructure costs, Open Source Software in Schools: Information sheet.

As an LEA Schools IT support guy...

[tygerstripes]

(or LA, as LEAs have been rebranded)

It's true that maintained (ie non-private) schools do have huge autonomy in how they spend their budget and manage their IT, as long as they support the National Curriculum effectively.
However, most Primary schools are not large enough to employ anyone with any decent knowledge of IT, and overwhelmingly they surrender part of their budget to the Schools IT Service run by their Local Authority in order to sort these things out. More importantly, they don't have the time or expertise to even look into these things! Even Secondary (High) schools depend on the local IT Support service to some degree - for hardware and network support, if nothing else.

So, it's down to the LA - the Local Authority, your friendly county/district/borough/city council or Unitary Authority - to drive innovation and intelligent software choice in schools. And what do they do?

Well, yes, they're predominantly in bed with big corporations who have established enterprise sales, support and service structures in place to get the big council contracts. Now, generally the Schools IT Support teams are somewhat independent from the Corporate IT bods, but seldom are they entirely separate and there is usually a noticeable cross-over. My personal dilemma is that, while I support schools, I myself am supported by the Corporate IT team, and depend on them for my office workstation. The result? Thanks to Council IT Policy, I am forced to use MS for OS, Office and every other flavour of software and as a result, am only able to significantly support schools in the same software .

Oh, believe me, I would dearly love to get them using OpenOffice.org (which, irritatingly, Capita Education Services - the biggest UK supplier of Schools Management Information Software - do not support), Linux, Firefox, whatever, but because I'm part of this big horrible organisation, my hands are tied and so are the schools'.

The latest initiative from the government is to open up competition between various Council IT services so schools can go over the border and get their IT support & training from Bogcaster Council instead of Tadminster, but in effect this has virtually no impact since - as I mentioned before - most schools don't have the time or inclination to go hunting around. If it's not dropped in their laps, most schools won't actively seek change as it makes life busier and harder in the short-term.

In short: No, this report will not make any difference at all.

Does only learning Windows provide good value?

[GreatDrok]

It would be interesting to weigh the benefits of teaching students to use computers including multiple platforms versus teaching them just to use certain applications (Office) on a single platform. From my experience in education (far too many years in university as a student and staff) I have found that often the students who have a varied experience are also the most comfortable learning new things. Computing is all about new things and if students are scared to try anything it is hard to get them to function, especially in a scientific environment.

I personally think that the whole standardisation on Windows is not about education quality but rather about making life easy for the teachers who often appear to only be a few pages ahead of the students when it comes to using software. Teachers are the limiting factor. Students are likely to adapt easily to all sorts of platforms without much trouble, but teachers (apart from a small number of bright individuals) have really only learned which button to mash so it isn't surprising that the pupils all learn what button to mash and when mashing that button doesn't work they don't know what to do.

Is this the future of computing? I really hope not. So no, standardising on a single software platform is not good as they do not learn how to adapt. Learning is not just about known how to do something, it is about why you did it.

Change afoot

[ajs318]

Human beings have two modes of learning.

Babies and young children learn by rote {means-oriented}. Older children learn more in terms of abstract concepts {end-oriented}. This is an evolutionary necessity; a three-year-old probably hasn't worked out the likely consequences of tumbling over a cliff edge, so a harsh reprimand from an adult can literally be a lifesaver. Teenagers think they know it all and are continually experimenting with boundaries. Adults have a tendency to revert spontaneously to means-oriented learning if they think they cannot understand something.

Now, as things currently stand, Microsoft have achieved a monopoly through a combination of illegal and immoral practices. So schools are teaching Microsoft because "it's what they'll encounter in the real world", and meanwhile businesses are buying Microsoft because "it's what they learned in school".

Schools today are basically free Microsoft training centres. The kids don't learn word processing, they learn MS Word. They don't learn spreadsheets, they learn Excel. They don't learn to design web pages, they learn FrontPage. The teachers are just parrotting from the Microsoft textbook. All those unreliable Windows machines need resetting from time to time, so a full-time "IT technician" is required to go around rebooting them and never understanding what went wrong in the first place. This demeans the job title of technician {it used to mean "someone who knows just as much as an engineer, works just as hard as an engineer and gets paid half as much as an engineer"}. A monkey could be trained to do that, for crying out loud. Maybe somewhere in the world there is an organisation which has actually trained a monkey to reboot misbehaving Windows boxes. Actually, Microsoft are working on lowering the status of "engineer" as well {it used to mean "someone who did more mathematics at university than someone on a mathematics course"}.

Maybe if schools weren't indoctrinating impressionable minds into The Microsoft Way from an early age, then businesses wouldn't all be buying MS Office "because it's what they learned in school".

I was actually around in the 1980s, and I was forced to listen to all the music that doesn't get played at "80s nights" because it was shite. In order to survive around computers in those days, you had to pick up on abstract concepts because there was no consistency. BBCs, Commodore 64s, Orics, Spectrums, Dragon 32s, Amstrad CPCs, and the obsolete models they had replaced -- they were all different. Get yourself an emulator and some tape images, and have a play. Newsagents sold magazines with listings that the truly masochistic could spend hours typing in. Some people actually managed to hack a program written in one computer's dialect of BASIC to run on another {I accomplished this feat at least twice myself, modifying a PILOT interpreter originally meant for the Apple ][, and a text adventure game meant for the Oric, to run on the BBC model B}. As the next-generation machines like the Amiga took over, type-in listings disappeared; due in no small measure to the lack of a useful bundled programming language. {AmigaBASIC was like a poor-quality "1970s crate" emulator; barely computationally-complete, and certainly couldn't be used for writing any sort of application programs.} When I left school and went to university, there was a curious mix of DOS, VAX/VMS; and, later, more or less heavily modified versions of Unix. The VT220-alikes in a room wouldn't even necessarily have the same keyboard layout.

I survived.

and what that this prove?

[shis-ka-bob]

The PC and Internet revolutions were Geek-driven. The non-Geek office workers were quite happy with secretaries and file clerks. Remember when 'file' meant a pile of papers sitting in folder and 'file search' meant rummaging though cabinets trying to figure out if the file was misplaced or if you simply had the wrong key work (e.g. 'Car Insurance', 'Auto Insurance ' or 'Insurance for the Honda'). The non-Geek office worker was satified with this.

So who cares what the non-Geek users are using? Thats like trying to understand where a herd of horses is going without looking at the lead stallion. Of course most of us are not as physically imposing as a stallion, but the analogy has some validity: If the lead stallion is considering the needs of the herd, he can succeed. If the open source Geeks are looking our for the needs of the non-Geek office worker, they too can succeed and that success is good for all. There are many forms of leadership, Geeks provide the technical leadership of society.

Deceptive?

[shaneh0]

This is another example of the "Micro$oft $ucks" slashdot mentality.

Worst-case scenario: A parent sees the commercial and decides that instead of the new Macbook that their son asked for to assist with his music production, they could purchase a great Wintel notebook for 2/3 the price. So they head to Best Buy, pick it up, and perhaps after they give it to their son they find out that it doesn't have ANY MUSIC CREATION SOFTWARE! Oh No! So they search Google for /windows "music creation software"/ and what do you know: 70,000 results.

Looks like those parents were DECIEVED all right.

Microsoft is advertising their platform. Their brand. Maybe the best thing is that in a year when the kid no longer cares about creating digital music he can use his Windows-based notebook to run any of the millions of other software applications that have been written for Windows over the past 15 years.

It's like saying that Gatorade commercials are deceptive because Gatorade doesn't actually sell sporting goods equipment.

What happened to bidding?

[Intron]

So why isn't desktop software purchased the same way as every other item a school buys? Just put out a spec saying what it has to do and the level of support expected and take the lowest reputable bidder. If the spec says: "must have email, spreadsheet, word processor, email, etc." then OK, but if it is written to say "must be MS" then something is wrong. If they were doing that, there would be no need to have to "review" whether they did the right thing, they would have done that up front.