Re: [school-discuss] More Progress!

[David Bucknell <david@members.iteachnet.org>]

Dear Leon,

Great story -- spiked with real life pain as with all great literature ;-).

I have recently forced a faculty through a half day small workshop on each of
the sections in "Look at the Numbers" plus one I wrote specifically about
schools as a drastic response to increasing snide remarks about "open source" --
and, actually, it seemed to work. Teachers liked such comments at the end as "we
could redirect spending toward teachers, who despite being the critical piece of
the puzzle, are universally underpaid." They also liked hearing that, if they
became fluent users, they could reach out to the community to help others:
"After all, that's why most of us became teachers in the first place." This was
met by nods of understanding and agreement. 

Quoting Leon Brooks <leon@brooks.fdns.net>:


> Funny, isn't it? I gave a presentation on OSS to a local government advisory
> 
> committee, including on OpenOffice.org, but it seems the penny just hadn't 
> dropped, for some reason. All of the presentations were made on MS-PowerPoint
> 
> on a Win2k laptop. I mentioned, right at the end, that I'd built this one in
> 
> OpenOffice.org Impress and never checked it against Microsoft's software, 
> just SaveAs'ed it and here it was. And got a similar reaction: raised 
> eyebrows, blinking, sitting back in seat, turning to look at each other as if
> 
> I'd just grown a third eye. Just to make the point, I explained that the 
> backgrounder they had sitting in front of them, printed out from Word by the
> 
> office staff, had been written in OpenOffice.org Writer.
> 
> I felt like - but did not - saying "HELLO? What have I been spouting on about
> 
> for the last half hour? IS ANYONE HOME?" Anyway, the committee's still 
> deliberating on that one, at least some of them positively, and they got 
> another serve from Harry McNally, about whom I hope you'll hear a lot more 
> soon. His missus, Jacqueline, is carrying a lot of weight for the OpenOffice
> 
> organisation, too. Harry focussed a lot on `unexpected' Linux benefits like
> 
> lowered risk. The local Microsoft rep was not pleased, can't imagine why.
> (-:
> 
> Cheers; Leon
> 
> 


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