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Britain Advises Against Vista, Office 2007 for Schools
An anonymous reader writes "The British government's educational IT authority has issued a report advising schools in the country not to upgrade their classroom or office systems to Windows Vista or Office 2007. According to this InformationWeek story, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency says costs for Vista and Office 2007 'are significant and the benefits remain unclear.' Instead, Becta is advising British schools to take a long look at Linux and open source suites like OpenOffice.org."
Having used both Office and OpenOffice.org extensively, I'm not really convinced that OO.o is really superior. Now, it is of course better in that it's open source, and it uses openly-documented file formats. But the user experience of OO.o is still lacking in many respects. Even on fast systems, it's slow and bloated.
I think it would be better to teach these children how to use LaTeX. It offers the openness of OO.o, but allows for the preparation of much more professional documentation. It would also be very useful for those students who wish to pursue university studies, as most math, science and engineering papers are formatted using LaTeX.
A Government department suggesting schools investigate the use of Linux? That's rather encouraging and should be seen as significant.
They want their excuse back.
No, really. I'm tired of answering your fucking phone.
Perhaps you might have been "insightful" two years ago, but Linux (and FOSS in general) is much more accepted and deployed in real-life situations these days. Nowadays, especially with Vista, people are serious when they talk about switching to Linux. It's no longer a negotiation tactic. It's *fact*. It's honest.
I've helped with Linux migrations for businesses that didn't even know Linux existed two years ago. Believe me, people are *tired* of taking it up the ass from Microsoft.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
As long as we're questioning the educational value of a "standard" OS, let's question the educational value of "standard" end-user software. Face it, 10 year olds aren't very interested in playing with a word processor or spreadsheet. How about something that will actually engage and challenge them? Even if they don't go for the XO, schools should consider installing some of the software from that system. Which is not terribly tied to the OLPC project, or even to Linux. OLPC's innovative user interface also deserves a close look.
I do not deny for one minute that there are a minority of specialised MS Office users who write macros and VB programs for which OpenOffice would not be suitable - but for the majority of MS Office users that do use only about 10% of its features, OO is a perfectly good substitute.
And dare I mention one important fact. I work in the IT industry and have a large group of friends who also (mostly) work in high tech industry. All of them have MS Office on their home PCs but not one of them has actually paid for it - they've either borrowed a corporate license from their workplace or use cracks of the Internet. In my experience, when these people compare MS Office to OpenOffice, they forget that MS Office should probably have cost them a couple of hundred dollars/pounds/euros whereas OO is entirely free. If they were forced to pay for their copies of MS office, they would be a lot more inclined to at least give OO a try.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
...go for it - what's the problem with this approach?
Like the other AC poster, you are commenting from a position of ignorance.
AT&ROFLMAO
The things aren't meant to be LAUNCHED! You just keep them around to look pretty and threaten people with.
You know, when I was growing up in the 1980s just beceause we didn't have to have Vista and Office 2007 or whatever didn't make me totally helpless in the workplace. The first time I had a class that used the computer writing lab in 7th grade was the old blue-screen WordPerfect. The first time I did any computer programming at school was BASIC on a TRS-80. The first time I worked with a spreadsheet was in Lotus 1,2,3 on a Mac in 6th grade. Somehow I managed to be able to translate these non-Microsoft skills into being able to use what "90% of the workplace" uses, and somehow it didn't manage ending up being "wasteful".
On the contrary, I think the computing diversity we had in the 80s is sorely missed.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
When I was at school in the seventies, the bright kids got an education. The less bright girls learnt to type, because there would always be work for copy typists, and the less bright boys learnt to use a lathe, because here in Birmingham (England, not Alabama) there would always be work in the car industry.
I wonder how that's working out? I was taught transferrable skills, like how to learn, and thirty years later I'm still learning. Meanwhile, there's no car industry and copy typing, shorthand and the rest may as well be candle making for all the traction they have.
I don't know what software my children will use in the workplace in ten or twenty years' time, and if I did I'd be making a fortune producing it. I don't know what JOBS they'll be doing in ten or twenty years time, perhaps (indeed probably) in a very different landscape to where we are now. What I do know is that flexibility, adaptability, the ability to learn and reskill and change, are going to be vital in a world where the linear career is dead. And that's why the best thing you can learn is how to learn.
So as a matter of policy, whatever software the kids are using at school, we use something else at home. School right now is Office 2003 on XP, so home is iWork '08 on Mac. Spreadsheet problems I show them how to do by hand, and I'm about to start showing them how to knock up code to do it (and I'm choosing a language they're highly unlikely to use in school: I'm torn between Scheme and Processing). We did a poster project with Keynote, but also with a razor blade and cowgum.
You can teach your children ``the workplace'' if you like. I think you Americans call those sorts of lessons ``shop''. Someone who has a good degree in a pure science or a legitimate humanity can learn to use Word to a sufficient standard in a morning. Someone who knows Word, but can't use a library or do calculus, is welcome to try learning those in a morning. How many successful authors can touch type, and how many just did hunt and peck? Same principle.
How did Brunel build the Great Western without the help of Office? Which was more important: using Office, or being a great engineer?
And before anyone makes the point, I realise these aren't binary, black/white choices. But in terms of mentality, they are: do you regard education as about learning the direct skills of today, or the ability to learn the skills of tomorrow? There's a word for people with the first sort of education, or indeed training, and the word is `poor'.
ian