Slashdot Mirror
School District To Parents — Buy Office 2007
WS Nick writes "Batavia school district in Illinois is recommending that parents of high school students upgrade their home computers to Microsoft Office 2007. Why not use one of the free alternatives and relieve parents of some of the financial burden they face to buy all the stuff for their children the school requires?" A comment from a reader points out how easy it is to interoperate with Office 2007 from earlier versions.
If you want a clunky copycat with about half the functionality, sure, go ahead and install OO.o. But the SD is smart to recommend that the students use something that will actually get the job done (assuming "the job" is anything above and beyond a plain text letter), not to mention actually prepare you for a workplace that demands Office in almost every case since OO.o doesn't cut it.
If the school plans on upgrading, why not tell the parents they should get the latest? Yeah, it sucks that they are going to a non-free option where the cheapest version is about $150 USD, but guess what - that is what the kids will see in the corporate world by the time they graduate from college.
By the way, Batavia, IL isn't exactly a poor area. I bet most of the families in that Chicago suburb could afford the $150 expense.
My Sysadmin Blog
Why is it that so many school districts are so quick to buy expensive Micro$soft software when free (and sometimes better) alternatives exist, then turn around and complain about not having enough money?
The district suggests they buy a discounted version restricted to educational use. Tough luck if the home PC is for the whole family.
It is a bit strange to propound that managing interoperability between the two versions is a tedious process. I think that a sheet of paper with instructions would be sufficient, even for the most computer illiterate students, few though they may be.
Concerning free alternatives, I don't think that we should expect widespread adoption of things such as OpenOffice, at least in public schools, for quite some time. Not all teachers are geeks, and they want to use that which they are accustomed to using. Even the slightest change can throw some people off.
This is quite a contrast to, say, university computer science departments, which are often filled with Linux computers, while the rest of the campus uses a plethora of Microsoft suites. It's just a different culture, with different expectations of what their computers and their computer software should do. When I tried to get my parents, who are not computer illiterate, to use OpenOffice, they became irritated, because they didn't want to have to learn something new. They just want it to work as expected, so that they can do what they need to do, in the way that they know how to do it. That's not unreasonable.
When moving to a new system, one must always weigh the cost, in time (and, consequently, money), of educating the people in the new software. Most of the world uses Microsoft Office. Unless someone releases something so similar to Office that it is nearly indistinguishable, this will likely remain unchanged, no matter how equal or superior the alternatives, free or not, are.
So the parents will all band together and get Office 2007 for $100. Some will download that compatibility pack. Finally, some will try OpenOffice and will probably suffer no hiccups at all. Someone should do a study on this situation and report back. We'll be waiting...
My teachers were just glad they didn't have to try and decipher what I call 'handwriting' and the rest of the world calls 'gibberish'. They didn't give a damn that it was written with wordstar on a 4" amber lcd. Oh, and daisy wheels were the bomb!
A couple of 30-somethings embark on the ultimate roadtrip
For what they do in most grades, notepad would be all they needed.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Given the high cost of education now, with education costs often comprising the vast majority of the municipal budget, especially for small towns, it is highly irresponsible for schools *not* to be considering and using as much free software as possible. If they are further going to drag parents into it, then it is doubly true as it becomes just another tax, unless companies are willing to provide free software to both schools and parents. Commercial software companies such as Microsoft have every right to a profit motive, but school districts also have a responsibility to use the least expensive recourse and there is no sustainable argument that commercial software is better than free software for education purposes at this point.
As a paid shill for Microsoft and Transcend, I think parents should also buy Vista Home Premium, which can be easily installed on Transcend compact flash drives.
"If students use an older version of Microsoft Office at home, it is usually possible to translate their projects back and forth between different versions of Microsoft Office,"the letter said. "However, this can be a tedious process, and information may not be always be translated properly."
Basically what they're saying is, "We standardized on crappy software that probably isn't even compatible with its own previous version, so you better buy the newest one too so your kids won't be stupid."
Having worked in a school district IT department was a real eye-opener. There were tight budgets with no money for building critical infrastructure. But we'd all be damned if we didn't have the latest versions of Office and new computers to run them on.
I pushed open source wherever possible, even in the back-end, but it was a real uphill battle. We'd buy the $299 Adobe Acrobat when all they needed to do was make PDF files, and for that, something like PDF Creator http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ is great - and free. And even after I demonstrated how easy it was to use and how good the results were, there was still resistance.
I wonder what kind of break the school district gets for pushing parents to upgrade?
And we all know that kids are incapable of learning more than one piece of computer software in any genre.
Which is why video game sales failed. Once the kids learned to play Tetris, they couldn't learn to play Counter-Strike.
Everyone knows that you cannot teach the kids HOW to write. And then leave it to them or their employer to teach them the keystrokes/mouse moves for the word processor that they will be using. You have to teach them on the only software package they'll ever be able to use for the rest of their lives.
As an IT employee for a public school system, I am not surprised at all. These people live and breath Microsoft products. Outside of the IT department, OSS is practically taboo in my district.
Its ridiculous to the point of sheer ignorance.
The big picture is that the kids need great teachers who challenge them and parents encourage their kids to work hard in school. The rest is mouse nuts. If you pick this battle, then the more important one will suffer.
I've always found it funny that every time you install a new version of Windows, during the blue install screen it keeps popping up features that are new about this version of the operating system. I specifically recall going from 98SE to ME (which was a nightmare, I might add) and laughing audibly at the "We have made keeping your photos and music organized easier than ever!" and "Now ME makes it simpler to use your computer to do..." Basically, these were all vaporware statements.
With that said, aside from it being "easier than ever to do..." can someone give me a REAL example of how office has changed from 2000 to 2007? I'm serious, I want to know what features have been added (and I don't mean changed to the GUI that make it prettier) that actually ADD FUNCTIONALITY. This is the real reason that this story makes me mad. I don't believe that it has really changed at all, let alone enough to charge me a $100+ to upgrade.
All I know is that 2007 is looking to be the first step for Microsoft to begin its DRM document implementation where it can lock down it's DOC format that will require people to stay with a certain level of Office or higher if they don't want to lose their documents."Thank you for using Stop-n-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"
RTF is compatible with thousands of programs. PDF is a great output format but not so good for a work-in-progress.
I use Macs and so the Office 2007 recommendation is useless to me. Somebody should buy the school district a clue that the world isn't just one little pigeonhole.
What would be wrong though is if the school recommends a specific product without having it freely available in their computer labs. If the children can't have access to Microsoft's products at school after the teaching hours then there is a problem. Before recommending parents to buy a product I would make sure the kids can have access to a good computer lab.
Just how many MS trolls there are these days?
Complain to the school board they are pushing a single vendor and not teaching. Contact your state representatives as well.
If they refuse to do anything, vote them out, and run yourself. And refuse to play this game in the first place.
Unless the class is "how to use office 2007" and an elective, they have NO right to dictate this, remember they work for you, not the other way around.. ( even if you can get educational versions for 25 bucks )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It teaches your kids to think for themselves and take action when they are being screwed.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
As unfortunate as it is, Office dominates the corporate landscape, and Office 07 or greater will eventually be the status quo. It's to a student's advantage to spend considerable time with that application suite. They will need to become familiar with its interface, idiosyncrasies, and annoyances. Running Open Office is not the same learning experience, especially for those who are not as as technosexual as we are.
I've instructed digital media the university level, and I try to recommend free or affordable software as often as possible, yet their are some poison pills you need to swallow. Office is a god awful suite of applications and most kids will need to learn how to interact with it.
That said, hopefully they will setup good computer labs for kids who can't afford the software or don't wish to buy the software.
If anyone else needs me, I'll be the guy in the corner being pummeled by the guys with the Open Office t-shirts.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
I recently became the sysadmin for a nonprofit. First thing they had me do was install 7 copies of XP on 7 P3 900mhz 256mb RAM IBMs that were donated. We also had 7 licenses for Office 2007, but I opted to install OpenOffice first and see if they were happy with that. Then the first person I upgraded for threw a tantrum because Writer didn't have a "diploma-style border" available and "it doesn't have the fonts I need! (neither did Word)". Needless to say, I gave them Office 2007, which runs amazingly slow on those computers. Everyone except this one woman uses word processors for very basic writing tasks, but now they all want 2007... and they were so incredibly happy when it got installed. Microsoft's influence is just that strong. People want what Microsoft peddles. It doesn't matter if it works better. That's what they're used to, that's what they know, that's what they've learned to use through rote tasks, that's what they'll continue to try and use. Hell, they looked at 'ribbon' and thought it was the best thing that was ever created for an office suite, and one of them started giggling with glee. Help me T_T
As much as I want to sing the praises of Open Office, Microsoft's version wipes the floor with it, I mean, the new graphics and stuff in it make all the presentations and A3 posters which I am made to do at my school. Fact is: Teachers like perfect presentation. MS Office works, it looks good and makes things easy- Open Office is a struggle all the way and doesn't look any good in the end.
Where one camp say: "Listen, Office is in fact demonstrably better than any Free(tm) alternative,"
and the other says: "Nobody needs all that functionality anyway."
I think:
People just aren't comfortable with computers, they're still unsure. So as a sysadmin your main job isn't to give them the best option in an objective way, the main chunk of your time should be spent making them comfortable with their system. Give them MS office, cos they know office, they like office, office worked in the passed, office was always what they used why change now? They don't care if they call you 100 times a day to get it to work, they're comfortable. Then of course they want 2007, its new, its got more stuff, they're sure it'll do everything they need. Of course when you talk to them they'll know that Open office is a perfectly good substitute, and they don't need 2007, but they're aren't sure of it, not like they're sure they like and can use MS office 07.
C'mon - while some might hate MS, you can't deny that as far as office suites go, they actually do make the best one out there.
This is virtually a non-story, concocted by some guy that thinks MS are bad to the bone. Unfortunately, they aren't some Hollywood bad-ass Clarence Boddiker-led bunch of arseholes, some of what they do actually is good, so feckin' deal with it!!!
"Batavia school district in Illinois is recommending that parents of high school students upgrade their home computers to Microsoft Office 2007."
The students aren't required to use Office 2007 at home, it's merely recommended.
All this means is that, if people buy Office 2007 and they have problems with it, they can talk to Microsoft. If they didn't buy Office 2007, as the school recommends, it's their problem.
If the school recommended, say, Openoffice, then they would be expected to stand behind that recommendation - and to provide an explanation, if it ultimately turned out that OpenOffice is a complete lemon. As recommendations go, it's not an especially safe one. But people still have the option of using it if they like, regardless of what the school recommends.
Bow-ties are cool.
than I will and using more polite words, but:
What type of retard would not be able to use MS Office after having used Open Office?
And are they the same retards that will have trouble handling a transition from MS Office 2003 to 2007?
Funny how OSS is always about 'choice' until someone has the gall to choose something other than it. Then we get dramatic articles about how, "the money is better spent on free software." Guess what? Other people have different needs than you! And people flock to what they know! How shocking! Now let's all post elitist comments about how no one takes the time to search out free alternatives to their office suite. Certainly people SHOULD be interested in this sort of thing, because *I* am! And don't people ever even THINK about the superior morality of free software?!
Seriously now, if you wish to persist in the same line of thinking regardless of how ridiculous it is (usually this is the case when you agree with it), then I will allow that. Allow me to say that your concern is better spent on more important matters, such as child labor, or other, *real* injustices in the world. But I get the feeling people rally behind these sorts of "us vs. them" exercises because they can feel like they're a part of something, while sitting at their computer. There are real problems out there in the world. People's choice in software ranks pretty low in terms of importance.
You've oversimplified the issue.
Besides the price tag, OOXML, Ribbon, and system requirements... is there an actual reason why Office 2007 is just bad?
MS Office 2007 Home & Student OEM CD & License $129 at the near by tigerdirect Retail Store in Naperville, IL
Because Microsoft wins anyway. Everyone will know how to use their software, cos the normal kids grow up learning MS Office, and the smarter ones look further for better things, and choose thigns like open office for its moral compass and things, but almost invariably, these will be the same people who have an affinity with technology so would be able to pick up use of MS Office fast anyway, so in the end microsoft gets what it wants a generation who grows up invaraibly able to use their software or at the least learn to use it very fast.
People always focus on presidential elections, but pay scant attention to anything below that. You know who votes in schoolboard elections? Teachers. They have a direct interest in it - these are the people who they negotiate with about salaries (next time you hear whining about teachers being underpaid in the suburbs - kick them in the shins, most suburban teachers get paid extremely well and get better benefits, sickdays, and healthcare than most of us).
Anyway, most schoolboards are filled with people who have no problem spending your money on bullshit. Also, many teachers are extremely reluctant to use software they are familiar with - thus they would rather spend your money than take a day to familiarize themselves with anything different. I can't blame them, but it misses the big pictures on costs and licenses.
Yeah, you must be using OO since it is pretty obvious you don't have a good spell check - it is ELOQUENT not Equolent! Me thinks you need to move to Batavia and buy MS Office 2007.
That was my response to the school board here-at a public meeting. The Board members that required Office lost the last election,too
Geek Hillbilly
And after having seen your second sentence, I think you should hold off the spelling Nazi comments lest a grammar Nazi comes after you.
Reality is, when you see "Staroffice, PDFCreator" on your resume after college. Geewiz, I could give 2 craps how fast they could learn office or adobe, the resume says they don't know it now. All the care about is the key words. You completely missed the point.
By the word or by the post?
A while back our County contracted for computer literacy testing for merit pay purposes for the office workers. The contractor asked which word processor the workers used and was told Microsoft Word, Well the contractors showed up and administered the test using pagemaker! The people who passed with reasonable scores knew word processors, the people who didn't just memorized click streams. If you can't jump back and forth between similar programs your just sorry and your job will probably be sent to a third world country.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Apparently, the school board has realized that Office 2007 is not compatible with other versions of Office since MS-Word makes the new scary ".docx" files. However, instead of making everyone in the city upgrade, why not just go under options and change MS-Word to save as the standard ".doc" files. This way, the school board will only waste tax payer money once. Silly school board.
Basically what they're saying is, "We standardized on crappy software that probably isn't even compatible with its own previous version, so you better buy the newest one too so your kids won't be stupid."
You need to point out the long list of organizations rejecting both Office 2007 and Vista, particularly the US FAA and DOT. If the school district wants to be in step with government and business, it needs to hold off and consider migrating to gnu/linux.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It would be very interesting if someone got caught using cracked copies of Vista and Office 07 to comply with this.
Civil disobedience and subversion don't seem to be part of polite Western society any more, but still, one can dream. That society at large and a judge in particular would be sympathetic to a parent who is forced to pay the MS tax "for the sake of the children" when low-cost and no-cost alternatives exist.
I can just imagine a tired looking soccer mom and middle management dad sitting in front of the camera with fists full of back-to-school bills for clothes, calculators, cell phones, computers, printers, sneakers, band equipment, sports equipment, more clothes, paper, cool pens, text books, binders, and yet more clothes...holding up one more bill for Vista, Office 2007, and the new computer required to RUN THEM, and saying into the camera "Why should we pay for this when there are free legal alternatives that work just as well and when nobody asked our opinion before this decision was made. If there really is no alternative to using MS products then the cost of MS is a tax, and MS should ergo be expropriated in order to hold it accountable to the taxpayers that fund it. We therefore refuse to pay tax to MS until said company becomes answerable to its tax base, or until our school district specifies at least one alternative zero-cost software environment that would impart NO SCHOLASTIC PENALTY."
I know. But one can dream, can't one?Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
The big picture is that the kids need great teachers who challenge them and parents encourage their kids to work hard in school.
Great teachers cost money and don't need expensive software that others have rejected. Even if you don't spend the money on teachers, you can spend it on something that can help students learn, rather than a DOCX translator. One outraged resident did a good job of expressing this:
This tells us that a large part of $74,000,000 was wasted on computers that no one needs, and software that no one else is running. The thourough investigation of the business affiliation mentioned in the article might send someone from the school's administration to jail.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What if a student's household only has a Mac or Linux computer
Maybe the school district should serve applications over the internet to students using Citrix, or MS terminal server, so everyone is on the same version, wether it is on the latest Windows PC, an iPhone, Mac, Linux, BSD, MSDOS
Msft shills seem to think so. All this: "the kids have to learn what they'll use in the real world!!" crap.
Want to guess how much time it took me to learn a WP? None. I just figure it out as I go. I suppose there are some specialist who make extensive use of the advanced features of their WP, but is that why kids go to school?
For what most people word processors for, how long does it take to go from OO to MS, or vice-versa? It didn't take me any time at all.
Speaking about getting paid to reply on internet posts, how do you contact with HR to apply such a position ? It seems that companies don't publicly advertise these jobs on their websites.
Do we HAVE TO work at contractors or even off-shore or can we find a confortable offer too from the manufacturer itself ?
I also received e-mail SPAMS for such offers which reached about all the Internet community, but seem to come from irrespectable sources. So what's the point not being able to contact directly the recruiter, I'm sure much better employees could be hired this way.
Ok I graduated from school about 7 years ago and even then I was e-mailing homework, and doing group work with a few teachers, and students. I imagine this is even more common today being that it seems "everybody" has internet access, and a PC. Basically back then we'd also run into some compatibility problems, but since we we're "techies" we'd know how to open the file anyway (legal or not). Unlike back then every teacher and student today is using the technology and some of them aren't smart enough to find a way to open certain files. It's better for the school district to just say we recommend software X, instead of students going "I don't have office so I'm going to turn this in late". Also I don't have Office 07, but can you open office 07 files in previous versions of Office, or do you have to have 07?
Vendor Lock-In sucks hardcore.
To everyone in the second camp, I have an easy demonstartion of what Office 2007 can do that Open Office cannot: Easily interface with Office 2007, which is on the school's computers. Whether the school computers should have Office 2007 is a totally different subject. Hence, parents with students in the school who want this feature should update.
And if I'm wrong, tell me about it here, sure. But TAKE ACTION, and write an op-ed to the local paper and advise them that OpenOffice.org will offer a free alternative office suite.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
When I was in school...no, we didn't use clay tablets and styluses, or papyrus, shut up, whippersnapper...we learned how to use a word processor.
It wasn't Microsoft Office. It wasn't even Microsoft Word, the standanone version before there was a monolithic Office. It was Bank Street Writer, on an Apple II. At home, I used something else, on my 386...I actually don't even remember what it was...maybe PFSWrite.
In High School, I was introduced to Word. At the same time, I was using Wordperfect at home. I still managed to type up the 3-5 papers a year that were required to be typed and even got into an argument over a threatened "F" from my sophmore English teacher who refused to believe I could do a "rough draft" of my final paper on the computer as well as I could on actual paper (I eventually wrote out verbatim what I had originally saved as my first draft, she wouldn't take it, but she didn't fail me as she'd threatened, I think she finally realized it was a stupid requirement).
At college, we used both Word and WordPerfect as well, and I also used Abiword in the dorm room on my Linux (Slackware, running kernel 1.0.somethingEarly, installed from floppies) and printed across the campus to the labs where I had a friend working their shift grab my papers off the printer.
The point is...as some poster in here commented...these aren't "Ofice 2007" classes these kids are taking. They're learning to type and use computers in general. Learning and using a different word processing package is mostly trivial if you already know how to use one. That the school district is "strongly suggesting" (as in, "We strongly suggest you buy our protection insurance, we'd hate for something bad to happen to your family's store, ya know?") that families upgrade to MSO2007 indicates that the school ddistrict itself doesn't really understand just why they should and do have and need computers in their schols in the first place.
As another poster said...contact the school board and administration. Explain why they're wrong. If they still don't get it, make sure you vote at the next election, in most places, that's in about 4 months, you have plenty of time to spread the word about how your current board and administration are more interested in spending their hard-won budgets on hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Microsoft software while cutting programs in your students' curriculums.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
I am not a m$ fan by any means but In this case I tend to have sympathy for the poor buggers at this district. They are probably like 75% of the other school districts in the USA and have most of their computers and software donated (or sold to them at reduced cost) by m$'s charity fronts. If this is the case and they are just repeating what the m$ people who donated the product told them about lack of backwards compatibility and do not have the knowledge of open source or free software to make a good decision. if this is the case then they should be educated so they can make good decisions for the students. I know that there are arguments on both sides about which office suite is better. I lean towards OO.org myself but there are some things that it will not do that m$ office will. But really any one who can learn m$ office can learn OOo or Corel if they want to. If the people who live in this district have a problem with the district policy on software then they should educate them or vote them out or both depending on how they feel about this issue. There are plenty of people who are happy with the garbage wrapped up as software m$ sells. Its the job of FOSS advocates to educate on the advantages of open source and help people to find what fits in best with their lifestyle.
The people who passed with reasonable scores knew word processors
Unfortunately, the testers didn't. Pagemaker is a desktop publisher, not a word processor. They might as well have told them to write in Eudora, it's close enough.
And yes, I get the point they were trying to make.
First, many employers are going to be looking for MS Office on the resume, and will test for MS office. They often will not be very tolerant of someone who has to look for commands, not do they need to be. Even at higher level jobs, I have seen ads for MS VS, or MFC, or Qt, when in fact if a person is trained to program, they can program in any language, and the employer should be more concerned with design and problem solving skills. Still, even employers who might know better still seem to want training ina specific product.
Second, the teacher has to support the software choice. If the student is running open office, the techer has to know how to help on that applciation. Now, since the average teacher test asks questions like "what is a word processor" and list the components of MS office, I don't think there is much training going on in the general word processor category. BTW, this question is from a national test from a well funded progra meant to educate college bond students. It is meant to test for college literacy, as if knowing hwo to use a single office suite makes one literate.
Third, and this relates to the other two, students can be minimally motivated. Students can do no work for a week because they were not given a pencil, and then complain to their parent that the failing grade is not fair. They can be taught how to solve a linear equation, and the complain to their parents that the test included negative numbers. This is to say that students, as all children, will tend to do more work trying to get out of work, and those that actually try to do work might have trouble abstracting the concepts. Even adults do this. I have seen people never lean that file open actually opens a file on the disk, and any command, evern c-x c-f does the same thing. I have seen people not understand that IE just loads file from the internet, and firefox does the same thing.
So while I think that it is a great waste of taxpayer money to pay for MS products, I do agree that a single product is probably the right choice. I think that OO.org could be a better choice, but that would require a level of sophistication that does not appear to exist in the average school district. We are talking IT people who state that IE poses no undue significant security risk, so there is no reason to support other browsers.
This is also why workaround with older versions of MS is silly. If the software does not work in the exact same way as at school, and the student gets stuck, that is the teachers fault for not teaching, not the students fault for not trying. So if the file is saved at school as 2007, and taken home, and it cannot be read for any reason, the student often gets a walk. Likewise, if the ribbon is taught at school, and all these menu present themselves a home, the same thing happens
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I hate it when it takes "-----" and turns it into a solid line across the page. Don't leave that line there, because if you do, it'll take a long time before you figure out how to get rid of it! (You have to use table/borders, IIRC, even if there's nothing that looks like a table on that page.) They might have fixed this in Office 2007, but I doubt it.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Such upgrading in useless and breaks file formats compatibilities, I think it better to stay on windows XP so far, since it is tested and more or less reliable. And explore linux desktop distributions as an alternative.
I think they should be forced to use a Cray, or an Eniac. That ought to weed out the riff-raff.
Seriously this is insane. We won World War 2, built the SR-71, flew to the moon and back, built and flew the Concorde without a single loss of life for over thirty years with a slide rule and a typewriter. Now, with all our fancy computational chicanery, we have a broken down space pick-em-up truck that was twice wrecked and can't be used more than twice a year, if even that, a fixer upper space habitat, a decrepit, half blind space telescope, and we can't get back to the moon if our life depended on it. And the schools think that a secretary's office program will save the day? We are in a heap of trouble. The art of learning is going straight down the toilet.
What?
download software == piracy == illegal "hacker" activity
And, of course, they don't give a damn about actually doing their homework and reading the open source licenses (GFDL, creative commons, etc), either. But then again, most people don't read the Microsoft EULAs, and just click on the 'agree' button, too. Plus, there's also the problem that these people are not really listening when they hear all the hype about "downloading software" and "viruses". Their buddies just tell them, "don't download anything on the internets!" And they listen to it, without recognizing the difference between a "good" download and a "bad" one.
Of course, a lot of people are also just more incinded to purchase a product in a store, because it's easier, than, "going to the intarwebs and navigating all that techie stuff." They're just, "not familiar with 'downloading'," and don't want to screw up their computer.
I have two children in high school, although not in the USA (Ontario, Canada).
A couple of years ago, I had a long talk with the teacher because they are teaching an obscure language that has to be licensed (for a fee). If you care to know, it is called the Turing Language.
My view was : why not use one of the cross platform free languages, e.g. Python or even Java? So we don't have to use it on Windows. Arguing with the teacher was futile. He agreed with me, but said the decision is from the school board. I left messages to someone at the school board, then got a call a week later, and explained the situation, but nothing came out of it.
Then, a few months ago, the other kid was asked to do something in MS Power Point as part of learning that software. I called the teacher and explained that we don't run Windows, but rather Linux and that there are free alternatives, such as Open Office that are cross platform. She first recommended that the work be done in school on PCs that have Windows already, then said that doing them on Open Office is fine in the end.
Why do school boards spend taxpayer money on proprietary stuff like that: because they don't know that alternatives exist. One more area that can use open source/free software evangelism, and will influence generations to come.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
People surely don't list proficiency in software as generic as a word processor on their resume (unless they're applying for a position as a secretary)? More specialized stuff like Photoshop or 3DS Max is one thing, but typing and printing to PDF is pretty damn standard across all software. I mean, my resume says something to the effect of "proficient in HTML, CSS, and PHP with MySQL; familiar with Javascript and AJAX," not "master of TextMate." Software is a tool, results are the outcome of skills.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Yeah, because it's such a "tedious process" for whoever sets up their computers to have .doc as their default saving format instead of .docx. The last time I checked any version of Office, their Preferences menu was quite capable of that.
The most prominent feature I noticed in Word 2003 is the "Reading Layout"; it reflows the document into "screens" as opposed to pages, and makes it easy to page through the document just by hitting space. Word and Excel both got side-by-side document comparison (diff). Outlook got "Search Folders" which dynamically update their contents based on search criteria, as well as "Cached" mode, which makes Outlook actually work without locking up when your connection to Exchange goes wonky. Worth paying for? Probably not, but I didn't pay for them, and they certainly made my life better.
;-)]. And then there's that Ribbon thing. I've used it, and I can find obscure features way more easily... YMMV. I do know that MS kept having focus groups with Office users, asking users what new features they wanted... people kept asking for features that Office already had. Frankly, I learned a lot about Office 2003 just playing around with Office 2007.
As for Office 2007, someone else already mentioned Outlook 2007's To-Do list for flagged items. All of the products can now save as PDF. The Word font/style changer does this handy live-preview thing so you can see exactly what your document will look like before you select a font/style. Excel now goes up to 1M rows [a dangerous feature if I ever heard one
Anyway, I think you knew there had to be new features, and I'm not saying these make Office 2003/2007 worth paying for, but there are definitely new features in there of non-zero value.
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
Search for Orifice 2007 torrent with crack or keygen. Download and seed said torrent. Install Orifice 2007. Use Orifice 2007 and get big slap on ass from teachers at school for using recommended software. Save big bucks. Use saved money for hookers and blow or whatever floats your boat. Life is swell. The End.
So, your job's pay was dependent on you knowing how to use pagemaker, even though you don't use it in your day-to-day job? How is that merit pay?
I understand most people should be able to pick up on any word processor put in front of them, but that's not relevent to the question at hand. Maybe the people were Microsoft-product literate. A better test would be to ask the people to do the work in a Finnish version of Office. Those who got reasonable scores would know the keyboard shortcuts and how the menus are laid out, which is all an enduser needs.
And, about your last statement, my reply would be: If you cannot use proper grammar, you're just sorry and your job should probably be sent to a third-world country. See how that's more relevent to word processor skills than knowing 'F7' means spellcheck?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Yeah this is Illinois. This state has the best contract with Microsoft offers as far as software pricing goes.. The entire State K-12 organization is covered under a single select contract. A parent/student can buy a copy of Microsoft Office Professional 2007 - the latest, greatest, fanciest version, for $75.
C =1140848
http://www.cdwg.com/shop/products/default.aspx?ED
Part of the the school district's job is to prepare students to enter the work force, and use its tools. If 99% of the workforce is using PowerPoint and Excel and Word, then I'm glad that's what they're teaching them.
To that end, I'm glad they're recommending Office 2007 to parents. Many don't understand the difference between Works or WordPerfect or Word.
And for what it's worth, the 2007 for home use is only $130 and can be installed on 3 computers in the home. It contains Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
-David
Well, if it's OK for the school to 'recommend' that the students (or rather, their parents) cough up the dough for software, why not 'recommend' that the students / parents be responsible for pencils & books as well? Remember, this is the case in places like Mexico, and as much as I love Mexico, their education system has crippled their economy, in addition to all the other problems such crippling causes.
How about if schools were to use primarily FOSS? It would be OK to include awareness of proprietary software packages in the curriculum. I seem to recall a recent Slashdot article on this topic....
I see a lot of comments about allowing FOSS alternatives - but why even require a computer at all? Is there *anything* to gain that is remotely worth the cost of the poor students by this? It wasn't *that* many years since I was in high school and no one really cared what you used to write your term paper - you had a word count requirement for length and spelling/grammar was required for most anyway (the exceptions were for people like me, I'm dyslexic so *some* flexibility was granted there, but even then not a whole lot. Of course, that resulted in some not so high grades but then if I can not spell well why should I get a high mark?). For the few times a typed paper was required we used class time to learn to do it. Most schools have a computer lab now - teacher need to use them instead of requiring crap for the home.
Like it or not, there are still quite a few families in the US who can not afford a computer - to say you *must* use any version of Microsoft is like (with respect to ability to afford even the base equipment) requiring a minimum supercharger on everyones Ferrari. Yea, I can see why one would do so if one is looking to maximize speed, however elementary through high school is *required* of every single person in the US so requiring one purchase a Ferrari is crazy, let alone making sure everyone has one of the more expensive packages. Pointing out that you get just as much speed from a cheaper engine is irrelevant. At least you can get student loans for college - this isn't getting too far from needing them for K-12.
Heck, even for a computer science class pretty much everything can be done with paper and pencil. In fact, I find it *better* that the students learn to do it with no crutches to begin with - if you can write a good paper things like office only make it easier. If you have decent writing skills then a word processor only make things easier - learning Word (or whatever) has no bearing whatsoever on your ability to write, other than it automatically corrects some of your mistakes. Same thing goes for requiring a higher end calculator - lets learn how to do math instead of how to put a formula into a calculator.
The only exception I can think of is using a computer for basic research - that is pretty much required and the computer is an integral part of it now (learning to look things up in traditional methods has no real bearing on how a computer does it). While I am sure there are a few others, this should be handled in class and not requiring use of a home computer. Colleges have labs for this very reason.
What next - telling high school students they *have* need to spend 50 dollars a month on some high speed internet connection or they fail?
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Relevant. It's RELEVANT. Guess you're all out of that 'F7' thingy.
As a 2003 graduate of Batavia High School(and current resident) I will say right now that not only is the school system in Batavia ass backwards but the town itself has many issues. Batavia is a town where no one wants to make a call on anything. The least of the problems right now is making sure every kid has a copy of Office 2007 at home. Maybe they should fix the over crowding issue at Batavia High School? Field house maybe? or that auditorium instead of a cafe-torium?
My home is decked out in Linux machines, and we use OpenOffice, even on the one last remaining Windows box. If the teacher can't read it I'll be happy to print it out for her on paper.
Really the nerve of some School boards, trying to upsell a useless upgrade.
Ribbon, pffft. That's right I said it. pffft.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
1 person in the class buy the Premium version and then all the other students pay $5 for a copy of it. Problem solved.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
I work in the IT Department at a fairly rich public school district, and we have made the decision to go with Open Office. Obviously it makes no sense forcing kids to upgrade to Office 2007, and this way we will be saving over $100,000 in licensing fees and may be able to hire extra staff with the saved money. This also solves the problems of kids bringing in documents saved in open standards and not being able to open them up at school (quite the large problem).
Um.. The Air Force does start out pilots in Cessnas and other small aircraft. That's how training works: You start out in a machine almost small enough to take off crosswise on most runways, and slow and forgiving enough to correct your mistakes. They don't exclusively use Cessna as their aircraft supplier however.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Back in 1977, my dad was the owner of one of the first microcomputers anybody had ever seen within a hundred miles of us, a TRS-80 Model 1 with Level 1 BASIC and a whopping 4K of RAM. I was specifically FORBIDDEN by my teachers to use it for anything useful at school. At the time, it was only barely acceptable that I typed book reports and other detritus on a used Smith-Corona Super Sterling manual typewriter... using a computer -- even for "word processing," a term that barely existed then anyway -- was considered cheating and I'd have gotten a fail for doing it. We couldn't even use crappy Novus 650 Mathbox calculators in class.
Now they're telling parents they ought to buy that POC from Redmond? My parents didn't even like buying me pencils (my dad had bought the Trash to manage his small portfolio of stocks, and had written -- in Level 1 BASIC -- the software to do that).
ODF, anyone? Anyone?
---------------------------------------
Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
I say people should use what they own. If you have works, word, wordpad open office or what ever software suits your fancy use it. I found out that it is just easier to save in the rich text format and know that it will open in any word processing program.
If you actually NEED an "office suite," that is. I spend at least 10 and often 16 hours a day in front of a screen, and I never "need" an "office suite."
Most people spend most of their time in Office in the word processing module. Word processors are for putting things on paper. Why are they putting things on paper?
If paper IS still the medium of choice for communicating schoolwork, then hoogizzashit how it got ONTO paper? And if the files are electronic, they should be in an open, interchangeable format (and again, hoogizzashit what software you used to produce that open, interchangeable file)?
Fark it, kidz... hand your stuff in HAND WRITTEN!
Do they still give out grades for penmanship?
---------------------------------------
Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
"People want what Microsoft peddles"
We do?
I've conducted a fairly thorough de-redmondization of my house in the last year, and neither I nor my fiancee (nor the cats) miss Office, Outlook, Word, MSIE, Works, FrontPage, or pretty damn near anything else they've ever produced.
I've sometimes enjoyed Flight Simulator, though. However, X-Plane on Linux and Mac rox.
---------------------------------------
Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
Batavia is an old name for Jakarta under Dutch colonial rule. Jakarta is the capital of Java.
Parts of OpenOffice (such as OpenOfficeBase) require the use of Java. Thus OpenOffice is the perfect office suite for Batavia's school district...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
When you have to hand over your paper, they will most likely ask for a certain amount of pages. in a certain fontsize. That should mean that everybody has the same amount of work to do.
What you do is resize the dot from e.g. 10 to 12. Not noticable, yet saves you much work in the end.
Sorry I can't find the video on how to do this.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
my kids starts college soon and told me that they insisted on office 2007 and the high end version of vista, which I said no! not going to pay more $$ for the OS than the whole computer...........
that stands to make a killing from all the students being herded into the corral ... ... for the _mental_ slaughter.
Or, with better grammar (Why the subject line has that length limit is beyond me.):
Good teachers will not willingly cause their students to become addicted to things which stunt mental growth.
So, I disagree. If you want good teachers in your school district, this _is_ one of the important battles. By supporting good tools, you support good teachers who are willing to use good tools.
There are better ways to do this than walking in and insulting Microsoft users indirectly by insulting Microsoft, and there may be timing questions, but this is one of the battles to choose.
> Batavia school district in Illinois is recommending ... upgrade their home computers to Microsoft Office 2007. Why not use one of the free alternatives?
Office 2007? Does anyone even use that? Maybe Microsoft has found an easy way to recruit beta testers? The Batavia school district superintendent sounds pretty clueless. They probably bought him off with a comp copy of 'Microsoft Bob(TM)'.
I mean, honestly, and not trolling?
I'm thinking that most of the "innovations" in that list are basically fixing features that already exist in ways they didn't need to be fixed, in fact, in ways that would tend to even further discourage the student from thinking for him/herself.
To my way of thinkging, that list is more in the way of proof that the board of education that requires MSOffice 2007 is not living in the real world.
Not that you should tell _them_ that in so many words. There are ways to tactfully tell people they've publically humiliated themselves.
jdz
why can't people think for themselves?
These kids can just as easily use open office, ms office 97, ms office 2000, ms office xp, or ms office 2003.
their docs can all be read on ms office 2007.
So why the need for an upgrade?
Isn't everyone a bit tired of MS dictating how everyone does business?
I use open office where ever possible. I try to convert all my clients to it.
It does the same damn thing and it's free!
They're using their grammar skills there.
Funny how OSS is always about 'choice' until someone has the gall to choose something other than it.
Without OSS, the only choice for PC's would be Hobson's: Microsoft, or nothing. Let me illustrate from Linus himself, commenting on the latest brouhaha over the Linux scheduler:
(Emphasis added.)
The difference, though, is that Microsoft doesn't always work with people who report problems; sometimes they simply ignore them forever. Apple has been guilty of the same thing. That's what makes OSS different: the demand for accountability will always be met, either with compliance or by a forked project that will comply.
If it is anything like windows Vista it is not ready for prime time and will never be ready either.
good luck students!
D~W
Stories like this always bring up the same tired arguments. In the one corner you have the OSS zealots who are championing Open Office et al, while on the other side of the ring we have the blunt 'real worldists' who point out that professionally, nobody uses Open Office anyway.
The problem here is, I haven't seen a convincing argument as to why schools should start using Open Office/your choice of OSS Office suite.
Sure, it's free. But most places have an IT budget. They can afford to spend money on this stuff. Please imagine trying to explain to a non-tech savvy headteacher why you think he should switch from MS Office. The best you can get is "It has all the same features as Word". So? This guy will be inundated with complaints from parents asking why their kids are being taught this crazy mumbo jumbo. They're getting their kids IT lessons; they expect to hear familiar terms like Microsoft, Office, etc etc.
I'm not saying we should pander to people's closemindedness. But we can't try to advocate open source all the time, because as far as I can tell, Office, and Word in particular, is considered one of the few areas where Microsoft have got it right. Let's not give up the fight, but there are reasons why every business uses the Office suite and why most people won't be persuaded to change.
Your name is extremely appropriate for a discussion relating to Batavia, IL.
sigfault. core dumped.
.. if you want a license to run Office at home, they'll sell you one, plus media, for a nominal fee that is supposed to cover media and administration. All you need is a hyperlink from your company IT department, and you can get it for £17 in the UK (probably $17 in the US).
They don't want people taking their work home and discovering that those nasty, smelly hippy, open source office programs can do most of what they need anyway. Especially not anyone in charge of purchasing software.
Printable http://www.kcchronicle.com/articles/2007/07/27/new s/local/doc46a9cc9908105330494432.prt
Why UNIX?
Then lie, one is just as good as the other. Jesus are we all prudish mormons all of a sudden?
Living in England, for my GCSEs (end of compulsory schooling exams for 16 year olds), the IT exams/courseworks were very very strict on not using microsoft names. Eg you couldn't say Excel, you had to say spreadsheet package, or presentation package instead of Powerpoint. However, when it came to submitting my work, they would only accept the Microsoft format. I tried ODFs, HTML, PDF, plain text, but they refused to accept any of these.
standard ".doc" files
Mod parent funny.
*shrug* I really don't care for the debate myself. There's too much zealotry invested on both sides, and little objectivity to be seen. But MS does have at least two things that were essential for it's success. One it's tools work together, not just with itself, but other add-ons.* Two it has the width and depth of support material for those wanting to learn it. So far I've seen only one OO book.
*And there's a wealth of add-ons.
My boss still uses Wordstar(a DOS based version!) because it can do things that Office cannot. He is the MD for a successful (MS based) software company.I think that says it all really.
I teach IT is a high school in England and our IT manager recently decided to forego the £8,000 per year MS Office site license and go with open office. Now I'm certainly an advocate of open source software, but let me bring a few realities home to you:
Open Office is still not entirely stable. In terms of word processingand DTP it seems to be fine, but some of the spreadsheet functions that the kids need to use in projects (like webquery) make it crash. In fact, it crashed when the whole staff were being demonstrated it when the idea came up...
The Database software is no good for teaching; A-level and GCSE projects require the use of Macros, and teh database software does not have these. This means we have had to buy a 100 user license to MS office just so these kids can do their coursework. The alternatives of using Java and the like are unrealistic.
For most people it is a big step: many have used nothing but office, and that means they'll be confused come September when new programs are thrown at them; we're going to have to take some time out to familiarise the kids (and staff) with some of the features and quirks. We also have a huge number of books on spreadsheet and database use that would be defunct, and hundreds of teaching resources that we need to redevelop in our own time.
The reality of it is that making a switch to open office can be something of a nightmare, and I imagine that many organisations won't bother. The savings would take a good while to manifest themselves after the initial confusion/retraining/whatever. We were told last year that come this year there would eb no MS Office, Open Office was on the network and we should use it to keep familiar with it, but of cours nobody wanted to do that so now they're all doubly screwed.
if the school is recommending such an upgrade are they going to be liable when I get a bunch of spy ware on my computer because I had to install windows to run their software?
The school districts I've been around in Cincinnati are great for one thing: begging parents for stuff. A friend of mine has 4 kids in school and their school supply lists are ridiculous. For the youngest, in 1st grade, the teachers actually tell the parents what brands of crayons and glue to buy, all of which are the most expensive. Then the high school is even worse, requiring computers, software, and the like.
It's bad enough that the school can't provide some of the stuff, but the worst part is that the list includes tissues, toilet paper, paper towels, and so forth for the classrooms. I can live with parents needing to buy their children their own supplies, but if the school can't afford paper for the children to wipe their asses with, they need to reprioritize.
Maybe spend less on computers, recordable marker boards, and gymnasium floors and more on basic needs. What's hard to understand about that?
And you also failed. PageMaker is a page layout program, not a desktop publishing program. PageMaker does not publishing anything. You do!
From a coder's point of view they are quite different, so I'm glad the script was quite small:
Set objXL = WScript.CreateObject("Excel.Application")
Set oServiceManager = CreateObject("com.sun.star.ServiceManager")
etc.
Why not just use a Standard format? RTF was a godsend when I was in middle/high school. Why? Every computer I ever came across could read it with no problem. Sure, you don't get a ton of flashy graphics/fonts. But 99.9% of the time, people struggle with plain text type documents. Or, why not just use ODF? If I were a computer teacher, I'd take a few minutes to teach the kids about file types, open vs closed standards, etc. Use Doc if you want, but ODF will always work between school and work. SOmething to that effect... You'd be AMAZED how pissed off young people get when we find out someone is trying to control their information/computers. At
our local school district has some sort of deal worked out, where local parents can buy OEM software through a distributor and get really fantastic deals. Office 2003 was about $40; Acrobat was less, etc.
When my friends first asked me about it (I have no kids) I thought they had come across some sort of spam site selling pirated software- but it's fully legit, they just have an arrangement to channel all the sales to a particular vendor who gives a big discount on top of the educational pricing.
So any school district with a good # of kids is looking at some powerfully persuasive arguments to get good pricing for their students; and as a parent, having access to all this software for a fraction of the list price is pretty nice too...
(that being said, Office 2007 is a pain. I like how they have redesigned it, but I am LOATHING how much work I am going to have to do to get our users swithched...)
EOM
Z80 processor, "Sinclair" BASIC. Assembly language. Membrane keyboard with no lowercase.
Then I compounded the mistake with a Commodore! A whole _different_ processor! Commodore BASIC! Single-sided floppy drives.
And then the avalanche: X86, 286, 386, 486, 586, K6-III, AMD XP, K8. With DOS, Coherent, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, OS2 Warp, XP, Red Hat, Fedora, Debian.
Sweet Jesus, the horror of creativity and adaptation! No, far better to teach only one computer system and one set of programs on that computer system. Because if we all concentration really, really hard we can make time stop, right?
[I sometimes wonder how much this mentality correlates with the idea that there is really only one book a person ever needs to read for all time.]
"I teach IT is a high school in England and"
..
.. For more information on OpenOffice.org Basic, select "OpenOffice.org Basic" in the list box'
..
..
I believe you, I really do
"some of the spreadsheet functions that the kids need to use in projects (like webquery) make it crash"
I hadn't realized webquery was deemed mandatory by the UK department of education. How the heck did I manage in IT all these years without webquery. But wait according to this you can also perform webquery in Open Office. 'I was able to make this Webquery example work on my computer with very little effort'.
"A-level and GCSE projects require the use of Macros, and teh database software does not have these"
I just opened Open Office Base and it says:
'Macros created with OpenOffice.org Basic based on the old programming interface will no longer be supported by the current version
"that means they'll be confused come September when new programs are thrown at them; we're going to have to take some time out to familiarise the kids (and staff) with some of the features and quirks"
You're kidding right, kids have to be familiarised with the software. If it's anthing like my old college, it'll be the kids who will be showing the staff.
"hundreds of teaching resources that we need to redevelop in our own time"
insert training FUD here
"The savings would take a good while to manifest themselves after the initial confusion/retraining/whatever"
Insert increased costs FUD here
UN body promotes open source in education
Open Source in Schools
Linux Case Study : Orwell High School
was: Re:A rock and a hard place
davecb5620@gmail.com
Hey, I am from Aurora, IL just south of Batavia. I am looking for tech people but they are hard to find. The only LUG is in Chicago. Who is there from Batavia? Please let me know if the author of the article is from Batavia and how I might reach them. In general, how do you find people interested in Linux outside of LUGs? Thanks!
I thought slashdotters tended to be minimally competent with technology... Those 3 Office suites you mention - and OpenOffice.org as well - work in *exactly* the same way as each other, and even open/save each others files. Sure there are minor differences in the UI, but that is about as far as it goes, and in most versions, even the toolbars look the same.
http://swiftcoder.wordpress.com
Kids (even in high school) often do not realize that one program will not necessarily open files from another. We see this ALL THE TIME in our high schools here in Pasco County, FL. Kids buy some piece of crap PC that comes with WordPerfect and then bring their files in on floppy disks in WordPerfect format and wonder why Office won't open it. We need two things:
1. Students need to learn that applications use proprietary formats and they're not interchangeable - you CAN save as text or rtf but you'll lose formatting, and
2. We, as a country (and as a planet, for that matter,) are really being hurt because we don't have one universal document file format type that all word processors can read and write. We USED to - it was called "text" or ".txt" as Windows users are wont to call it.
Telling kids they "ought" to fork out $150 for Microsoft software is irresponsible. We are a Mac based school district and as soon as OpenOffice runs native on OS X, I will be recommending it to ALL of our schools K-12, not as a replacement for Office, but as an alternative to Office. Then kids can, if they want, run the same suite at home and at school, for free.
Music - www.richardmac.com
In other words, "Blah, blah, blah, American schools suck, they don't teach, and they're only about indoctrinating kids into needing government to take care of them." Congratulations, you're on the bandwagon.
What "dose of propaganda" are you referring to? Are you one of those religious nuts that refuses to believe in evolution? Or just a malcontent who things schools are sanctioned by the government in trying to turn all of our children into Socialists? Either way, it's no wonder kids are turning out badly with parents who have such disdain for our educational system.
Here's a thought: Public education was never intended to be the be-all and end-all of a child's education. You are supposed to be (gasp!) a partner in your child's education. If there's something you think your kid needs to learn that the school isn't teaching them, you are supposed to teach them. People who drop their kids off in the morning, pick them up in the afternoon, and expect all of their educational needs to be met with no fuss and no muss are idiots, and there are a depressing number of those people around now.
Are there problems with schools? Sure. Surprisingly enough, just like everything else in our world, I'll be the first to admit that they're not perfect. It's reasonable to expect that a few times in your child's educational career, they'll have a bad teacher. This isn't a failure of the entire educational system, it's called LIFE, and believe it or not, even that teaches children valuable lessons in dealing with people and situations they don't like. Guess what. Once they get out of school and into the work force, they'll probably have a few bad bosses, but oddly enough, I don't see people using that as an excuse to say that capitalism and the free market is a failure.
Or maybe you're one of these nuts who supports publicly-funded school vouchers to private schools. If you want to send your kid to a private school, more power to you. But don't you dare ask for my tax dollars to do so if you don't like the school that my tax dollars has already provided for your kid. I find it extremely stupid and hypocritical that the people yelling because they're having pay for public schools that they don't want to send their kids to are asking for other people to help pay to send their kid to a private school.
Or perhaps you just think we should privatize schools. I've got news for you. Until around 1870, schools were privatized. Why do we have public education now? Because it didn't work, at least not very well. The result was that rich people's kids were educated, poor people's kids were not. Our public education system was one of the key factors in our country becoming a superpower, and almost all modern nations have public education and have greatly benefited from an educated general public. As hard as it may be to believe, even rich people greatly benefit from an educated general populace.
As for the rote memorization and other teaching methods, I hate to burst your bubble, but some things are a pain in the ass to learn, and the best way to do it is to memorize it. If you think that memorization doesn't serve an educational function, please don't ever sing the alphabet song to your kid. That kind of thing is way too rigorous. Don't teach them to spell, either, I guess they'll just pick it up through, I dunno, sleeping with a book under their pillow and absorbing it through osmosis I guess.
Besides that, I don't know what kind of schools you went to, but by the time I was in ninth grade or so, my classes actually rather free of rote memorization. In English, I had to write essays about symbolism in poetry. In history, I had to write about the impact of some battle to some war. In government/economics, I had to create projects that demonstrated methods of advertising. Even in math, the most rote class there probably could be, I had to use a wide base of knowledge that spanned the previous decade of learning to solve difficult
...the families must buy and drive only Ford products. The district has made it plain they are not interested in teaching general "driving concepts" or other such OpenCar nonsense, only the specifics of driving a Ford product as Ford products are clearly used by everyone and meet everyone's needs.
I've been using Oo.o since 3~4 at work, mostly in a subreptitious way (I granted authorization whenever I could get it, but did no overly open advocacy).
My primary intent was to evaluate Oo.o in a M$-only (non-US) government department. Technically it was a huge success. I compared Oo.o to Office 97 _and_ Office 2003.
Oo.o is not only easier to use but even more compatible with MS-formats than their very own Office 97. I even read some doc files in Oo.o which were FUD about Oo.o being incompatible, yadda, yadda... after the same file wouldn't open in Office 97. Quite pathetic from such an almighty multibillion corporation (technologically AND marketing-wise).
Some differences in Office 2003 even made our spreadsheets stop working (we had to figure workarounds, which means we had costs adapting after upgrading to Office 2003). Not so with Oo.o: things kept working well.
Of course, not everything is rosy. Very small differences meant I had to do minor spacing adjustments in Word every two or three months; twice a year one doc file would give some serious problem, routinely solved with opening the same document in Word and pasting it on Oo.o (so, yes, one must keep Office installed during the migration).
More seriously, though Calc replaces Excel regarding spreadsheet workings, graphics are generated in different positions (e.g., like in pie-charts). This could lead problems in phrases like "see the first slice" or "look at the blue slice" which could represent different data in Oo.o and in Excel.
Impress x Powerpoint is generally ok, except that Impress is better -- it shows png pics, while Powerpoint can't in some versions. But for all that "very useful" ppts about "what a friend is...", "you know you're fat when..." or "33 reasons why you should not..." it's totally ok.
The main problem was Access... we really need to get a good replacement for this beast ASAP. Also, Draw is excellent but we need to get people using it, so they see Office doesn't have it.
Now, something totally different is using Linux. Many problems arise, starting with non-installed M$-fonts -- and thus, very different document layouts. Even so, I used Linux for over a year and half, with good results in the same work settings.
IMHO, and mainly for big organizations with thick-headed clearly pro-M$ bosses, Oo.o and Windows Free OSS apps are the way to Linux -- and not the other way around. Sorry, if important dudes like Aaron disagree, but that's what I've seen.
I used latex for my lab reports. It looks a HELL of a lot better, and the formatting options are significantly nicer. Plus once you get your basics written, it's much easier to create a well formatted document in latex than screwing around with word. If you're smart enough to be performing physics labs above 101, you should be smart enough to learn latex...
Parents are asked to buy books for their kids that are used once and then sold back for much less than what they bought it for. So I don't see what the big deal is in asking parents to purchase software that will last them several years that costs about the same as a single college textbook (if they get it discounted, as the article mentions). Asking parents to fork out $500 is unreasonable, but asking them to fork out $80 is not.
Speaking from experience, earlier versions of Office used to be just about as unreliable as OpenOffice. I, too, used to use OpenOffice, but mostly because it could export to PDF. Office 2007, however, is much much more reliable and I have never lost my work. OpenOffice still has issues with data loss.
Also, kids don't know that they have to save to Office 2007 format from OpenOffice. They'll save in the default OpenOffice format, and get yelled at by their instructors for not having the right version. They'll also get yelled at because of formatting issues. Whenever I converted between OpenOffice and Office 2003 I always had to edit my paper.
In certain school districts, the BSA has audited or threatened to audit them for compliance. Since then, any software that is not distributed with a license or does not have some sort of license will be feared as being considered pirated software. A lot of school IT staff or administration have no concept of FOSS and only understand commercial proprietary software licenses. Teachers are also afraid of viruses, and refuse for anyone to bring outside copied software that isn't on an "original disc" (i.e. something that was professionally pressed).
On a tangent, having software that students can easily make copies of and take home with them to learn or do homework with could be benficial. The same could be said of "open books", books aimed at schools and students that knowledgable people collaborate on. If students could freely copy their learning materials, then learning would be less restricted to those with less money.
Twinstiq, game news
Why don't they just offer the Microsoft Work At Home http://www.microsoft.com/Education/WorkHome.mspx ; after being told many years ago by the courts MS has now created a "policy" of "allowing" you to have software from work on your home computer :) but this is a special education license ahem..
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Next, I can see the school taking a position of getting the next generation of software cheaply while they could. This isn't automatically a matter of bad thing even if it does present some incompatibilities. However, I grew up with word perfect, MS office, and a few others. Today, I can switch to about any word processor with ease compares to what others do when going from versions of the same application.
There is no reason why the school is locked into a single unit of anything as if it is the end-all be-all. Back in the 80's when I learned the stuff, the school had apple 2 computers and very few MS based ones, I didn't get my hands on a Intel based computer that I could do much with until 93 or so, it was after I was out of school. I seems that quite a few people from my era who had to switch because one place required something that the last place didn't learn more by accident then those coming out of a structured MS only world. Some time change is good.
This school is doing what ALL good schools should be doing: giving their students the skills and tools they need for the future.
The problem with FOSSies is that, while they preach freedom of choice, the reality is that they are trying to force businesses and consumers to ONLY have the choices the FOSSies dictated. So, as in this case, they don't support the school's freedom to choose MSO2007... quite the opposite. They want the school to choose any office package they want, as long as it's OpenOffice.org
The FOSSies also do the exact same thing with media players (attacking the BBC for choosing WMV formats), as well as attacking companies for making their pages work best with IE7. You can "choose" anything you want, so long as it's a FOSSie-approved application.
THIS is why FOSSies are the enemy of freedom and innovation. They are the worst form of hypocrite.
You asked for features that improved Words functionality, not just made it prettier or gave it a new GUI.
Why does it seem like almost EVERY reply talks about the new look. The few "new features" that do get mentioned have NO BEARING on what a student would be doing. This is for high school for Goddess's sake, how many of use needed features like 3D shading and soft shadows? Do those things even show when the document gets printed? And will a teacher even care how pretty it looks on their screen if the student can't get their punctuation right?
In my opinion the school district has lost sight of what they are supposed to be doing, teaching students how to write, read, and balance their check books. My 2 cents, this is stupid and going to end up costing the school district money later, either with support/training/hardware issues or a lawsuit by some parent who hates M$.
It figures. The whole idea is batty.
Considering the expenses of raising children, upgrading Office seems to be a lowest priority.
After the educational discount, the latest Office is a good way to obtain further non-backward-compatibility lockin. If the parents use the new Office and convert the business versions to the new Office, the ripple widens. So goes the old strategy. I wish Office would actually merit upgrading.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Slashdaughters, please stop using the term 'grammar Nazis'. The Nazis (a shortened version of the German words for national socialism) were a group of very evil and dangerous men who started a war that left 70,000,000 people dead and half of the civilized world in ruins in the 1940s. They systematically murdered nearly every Jewish person in areas under their occupation.
The term 'nazi' is not a acceptable metaphor for those of us who request precision in language structure. It insults the memory of the good people who were slaughtered by this criminals. Perhaps 'grammar martinet' after:
martinet \mar-t'n-ET\, noun:
1. A strict disciplinarian.
2. One who lays stress on a rigid adherence to the details of forms and methods.
And there is no reason to criticize precision grammar anyway. This shit is important. We can't make functional language translation software if people don't use precision grammar. The difference between (its and it's) is just as important as the difference between [ *(function_name) and * function_name].
But seriously, stop using the term 'grammar nazi' or anything 'nazi'. It is assured to cause you social embarrassment outside of the geek community.
There probably isn't much difference between these two constructions. My mistake.
But my point is that you won't just throw symbols around in precision code and not expect it to make a difference. You don't tolerate sloppy C language structure because it would destroy the functionality of your work. Same is true with English language structure. And English is a lot easier than C to express a complex and subtle meaning or thought.
i would rather see schools make some modest donation to OOo (or some other worthy alternative) and create a nice robust free alternative. that would benefit all citizens, and students.
there is NO reason to train grade school kids to use Office 2007. even if 90% of businesses use MS Office, they won't be using Office 2007 when these kids are out of college in 10 years. same reason it's stupid to train them to learn MS Windows when they are 10 years old.
if anything they should be using a computer as a tool. they should have basic computer use skills, but there is no reason for them to only learn, for example MS Vista, when it will be long gone by the time they are older. if they want to take computer programming classes, teach them the fundamentals, hell teach them html or something standard.
I like MS Excel in general, by the way - in spite of its intrusive design elements.
Now just whose son and heir got what bribe to pull this fast one? It can be said here and not allowed on the Kane County newspaper as a comment there would get a fast SLAPP suit to slap the politically savvy down, repossess their car, impound their dog, can the complainants and their families from any and all jobs, foreclose their house, etc...all items available to local political power structures. The smaller the county or local government, the more crooked they are. Read the local criticism to this caprice. WE have a local lutheran church board like this. A principle at this church was a dead set microsoftie. Come to find out that his WIFE was a county official in charge of IT procurement, and was a former microsoft customer engineer. No WONDER he was dead set against linux! He also wasted over fifty thousand dollars of his church's parishoners's money buying new windo$$ operating system software in the full knowledge that his church school's computer education department was using multiple unregistered copies of windows and DOS software that would NOT work in the new craptacular system. When this fact was pointed out to him in no uncertain terms, he became hostile and treacherous, and I was no longer a computer volunteer the following year. That was one way to keep his bribes in his wallet and his bedroom! Funny! The Lutheran Church was the first formed in the Protestant Reformation, and its' chief reason for formation was to literally kick the moneychangers out of the temple? Guess ya can kick the rodentia out of the buildings and churches, but ya can't keep 'em out!
As someone who has used both OO.o and MS Office extensively I'll say this:
IMHO, MS office is reliable, easy to use, has a smaller memory footprint, and is universal in the business world.
OO.o is free, in every sense of the word.
If your class is Business Admin 101, tell your students to get MS Office.
If Timmy needs to write his book report, save the $122 and spend it on something else. Hell, $122 will buy school supplies for the rest of the year
Just my $0.02.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
I honestly don't see what the big deal is here. Those parents who are able to think for themselves will simply make sure their children are able to produce compatible documents, and those who are not will blindly follow the recommendations.
The only disturbing thing is much larger the latter group is, but that is not, much as I hate to say it, Microsoft's, or even the School Board's fault. Microsoft is doing what makes them money. The School Board is doing what keeps them from being sued. (Little Jimmy got an F because he couldn't load his document, and it's because nobody told us we needed the latest version.)
Until we start forcing corporations to act ethically, and requiring individuals to take responsibility for not using their brains, the big news will be when this sort of thing does not happen.
Leaving aside the obvious retort that others have already offered about how the worthwhile skills are the transferable ones, -- by what magic have you come to know exactly which software packages are going to be in use in the business world, not just in ten years' time, but apparently for the whole of the century?
And is the implication of your suggestion true -- that is, that Microsoft Office 2017 is going to have an interface identical to that of Office 2007? Did you also use sorcery to discover that fact?
I thought they *required* not *recommended*?
If i mis-read the story review ill offer leniency to the school if it was a recommendation, not a requirement. If i didnt mis-read and it was a requirement, then i stand behind them not having the right.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
no, his job's pay was dependant on he knowing how to use a word processor, not a specific version of a specific software belonging to such category.
besides, measuring knowledge of Office's menus and keyboard shortcuts would be useless, given that it was a test of *computer* literacy, not Microsoft Office literacy, and a literate computer user ought to be able to do basic tasks (and/or find out how to) in *any* piece of software, not just the Microsoft-made product for the respective market.
sorry, but how you got modded Insightful is, frankly, beyond me...
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
I work for a city government. I learned a long time ago that trying to push open source software is pointless. Gov't organizations don't want it. They don't want something for free. It screws up the budget process. If we can save $10K on something, that will only hurt us for next year's budget. We can't have a lower budget. We must increase it every year and then actually spend that money. Otherwise, the budget office will slash our budget.
This is why I hate my job. No incentive to save.
Parents to school : "Give it to me for free or STFU".
(2) To the school district: (a) Please provide the cost for a Windows computer, and (b) please provide the cost of the software you are requiring. If 'a' and 'b' are not satisfactory, then remove the requirement/recommendation.
Honestly, I believe the was something else stating that Illinois was a Microsoft state; so this is really another ploy by Microsoft to get OOXML approved as a standard.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
http://www.mininova.org/tor/799639
Obviously not offering the intra compatability of something like Office 2007. But arguably far more features and far more useful for education... AND FREE!...
to tell you the truth i am glad, that means one more NON MAC (or as i call em crap) in a school distric, some it people are way too blinded by macs, like the mac servers, cost about 4 times more then a Linux server, also cost more then a windows based server. I may also come from a diffrent angle at this, i use excel as my primary calcaluator, i have a ti89 titamiam, but i prefer to use excel becose i can trace back steps easyer if i do one miss calcualtion and it all flows out to the end saving me time, i have done as many as 100 cells for a calcation and that was when i was in high school, and i found that 2007 was easyer... so i dont blame em, i just want to upgrade to 2007,(was in the beta)
You should, however, get Firefox with aspell to correct your spelling errors before posting.
Why UNIX?
There's a free tool that allows you to open docx and other Office 2007 formats in earlier versions of Office. I'm not sure but I think it downloads automatically via Office/Microsoft Update.
I recommend office 2007 over open office; it's just that much better. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are quite good. Also, the education edition installs on 3 computers and costs about $120 shipped from Amazon; or $40 per computer which is not bad. If anything the schools should offer Linux Server cert, not that crappy desktop stuff, alongside of the Cisco, Oracle, and MS certs they offer now.
A hand up and a foot on every chest...
I had a son go into kindergarten at the same school district last year. One of the required school supplies was a TI four function calculator. It had to be one particular model. It cost about $12. Remember this was for my kindergartner, why should he be using a calculator anyway? The teacher he had was wonderful. He never used the calculator, thank goodness, he can add small numbers.
That's hilarious. And a very good test, IMO, for discerning which persons can actually figure out how to *get the JOB done*, vs. those that have merely memorized one program's menus.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Last time I checked, there was still a category of software called 'desktop publishing'.
You almost cast into doubt my entire belief system! ;)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
but not the way Microsoft does it.
In this case, we're taunting Microsoft for putting too many features in MSOffice.
The stupic ribbon is a (very poor) attempt to fix a set of menus that had become overburdened by the poorly planned out set of features.
Shoot. for what I do, MSOffice might as well be the hodge-podge of separate apps you suggest is the open/free alternative.
In Claris/Appleworks, I could build a single document that solves some teaching materials needs I have. It's still a little clumsy, but the MSOffice approach is to have two separate documents. I have to open a spreadsheet, sort it, copy/paste into the document that is the template for the worksheet, then print two worksheets at a time. To approach what I can do in Claris/Appleworks, I have to resort to programming. (No, OLE, or whatever they call it these days, does not solve anything with this one.)
I'm not going to bother explaining how it goes with programming, except to note that the old Macintosh System 7, programmed in C, was easier to do this in than VB, and the resultant app was easier to use than what I could build in VB. (VB could approach the useability of the document I created in Claris/Appleworks., But that's about it.)
Microsoft $oftware just plain eat$ your lunch and your $pare time and doesn't give you anything of real value in return.
joudanzuki