I'm Head of UK special school, in London.
To clear a few things up - the timing of this is very strategic - coincides with the BETT show at Olympia - the main education ICT event of the year in the Uk,
Next BECTA are influential in that they're (one of) the voice(s) of Government - they don't dictate what individual schools do
Schools aren't obliged to adopt any particular system - most of them buy into services provided by local councils under "Service Level Agreements" - which give the impression of a locally controlled system - but actually the schools can opt out any time (some do - only the ones brave and knowldegeable enough)
My own school has an SLA for ICT with our local authority - it's frustrating but we stick with it because it's cheap. On new machines we're buying we're sticking with XP and Office 2003 - this is starting to become difficult on our laptops - however since laptops for individual staff are not routinely given log ons to the net we go with Vista. We can still get Desktops from Dell (our ICT depts. preferred suppliers) with XP - but no longer lap tops - we could if we wanted do a full re-install anyway - our ICT people set all new machines up for us.
The office problem is more interesting - we're currently purchasing licences for Office 2007 with each new machine - but deploying the old version in practice. However we're routinely getting people bringing in files created on their own machines, which obviously aren't instantly compatible with older Office versions. Office offers a prompt to download a plug in to convert files - however very few users have enough priveleges to install these, and our ICT people are now deploying the plug-ins on an authority wide basis as soon as they are able.
Individual schools will, I am sure, for the most part stick with latest versions of Office and Vista - UK education was badly bitten in the past by sticking with non industry standard systems - notably the Acorn systems in all UK schools in the 80's and much of the 90s. Despite being a far superior system, it died the death, due to commercial pressures - and most school leaders are only too well aware of the dangers of moving too far away from an industry standard. So they won't do it.
In a special school like mine (special schools in the UK have often been at the forefront of ICT developments) - it's important that we are able to run some extremely specialised software - much of which is written by fairly small companies and is unlikely to be versioned for Linux - but will clearly be eventually available for Vista. Ironically much of the American software is for Apple - who apparently gained a foothold in US special ed in much the same way as Acorn did in the UK. Don Johnston being a notable famed provider of specialised software.
A problem which my school (and I know of others) is having is the cost of providing MS Exchange server and other back office software to enable shared diaries with Outlook or similar. It truly is extortionate, and although we have devices such as Palms etc to do our own diaries it's very difficult to synchronise them with other staff, and we tend to rely on a much scribbled on A4 desk diary which is usually misplaced from the main office.
Consider for a moment if Microsoft decided to bombard schools with loss leading deals on Office 2007 and Vista (which they can easily afford to) - the schools would bite their hands off so quickly it wouldn't be true. So although there are some very noble words in Becta's report, in reality it's about getting MS to bring their prices down. And I guess in the wider market if MS were to sell Vista for $50, or £25, then it would more or less put a stop to the adoption of Linux by the average punter. They'll do it if they need to I guess - but not unless.
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I'm Head of UK special school, in London. To clear a few things up - the timing of this is very strategic - coincides with the BETT show at Olympia - the main education ICT event of the year in the Uk, Next BECTA are influential in that they're (one of) the voice(s) of Government - they don't dictate what individual schools do Schools aren't obliged to adopt any particular system - most of them buy into services provided by local councils under "Service Level Agreements" - which give the impression of a locally controlled system - but actually the schools can opt out any time (some do - only the ones brave and knowldegeable enough) My own school has an SLA for ICT with our local authority - it's frustrating but we stick with it because it's cheap. On new machines we're buying we're sticking with XP and Office 2003 - this is starting to become difficult on our laptops - however since laptops for individual staff are not routinely given log ons to the net we go with Vista. We can still get Desktops from Dell (our ICT depts. preferred suppliers) with XP - but no longer lap tops - we could if we wanted do a full re-install anyway - our ICT people set all new machines up for us. The office problem is more interesting - we're currently purchasing licences for Office 2007 with each new machine - but deploying the old version in practice. However we're routinely getting people bringing in files created on their own machines, which obviously aren't instantly compatible with older Office versions. Office offers a prompt to download a plug in to convert files - however very few users have enough priveleges to install these, and our ICT people are now deploying the plug-ins on an authority wide basis as soon as they are able. Individual schools will, I am sure, for the most part stick with latest versions of Office and Vista - UK education was badly bitten in the past by sticking with non industry standard systems - notably the Acorn systems in all UK schools in the 80's and much of the 90s. Despite being a far superior system, it died the death, due to commercial pressures - and most school leaders are only too well aware of the dangers of moving too far away from an industry standard. So they won't do it. In a special school like mine (special schools in the UK have often been at the forefront of ICT developments) - it's important that we are able to run some extremely specialised software - much of which is written by fairly small companies and is unlikely to be versioned for Linux - but will clearly be eventually available for Vista. Ironically much of the American software is for Apple - who apparently gained a foothold in US special ed in much the same way as Acorn did in the UK. Don Johnston being a notable famed provider of specialised software. A problem which my school (and I know of others) is having is the cost of providing MS Exchange server and other back office software to enable shared diaries with Outlook or similar. It truly is extortionate, and although we have devices such as Palms etc to do our own diaries it's very difficult to synchronise them with other staff, and we tend to rely on a much scribbled on A4 desk diary which is usually misplaced from the main office. Consider for a moment if Microsoft decided to bombard schools with loss leading deals on Office 2007 and Vista (which they can easily afford to) - the schools would bite their hands off so quickly it wouldn't be true. So although there are some very noble words in Becta's report, in reality it's about getting MS to bring their prices down. And I guess in the wider market if MS were to sell Vista for $50, or £25, then it would more or less put a stop to the adoption of Linux by the average punter. They'll do it if they need to I guess - but not unless.
> America has to put in codes before we can launch them
And so long as the americans go on thinking that then we'll be OK !
Some UK weapons are dual key - others aren't.
The UK on it's own could destroy the entire world - as could France - without a word to anyone.
(Also don't forget Torchwood !!)
If you join CND you'll find these things out - it's better than Jane's !
Turned me away from being a pacifist.