Re: [school-discuss] FW: OpenOffice in education

[ian <ian.lynch2@ntlworld.com>]

On Fri, 2004-02-27 at 15:57, Tom Adelstein wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> > Yes this is all true.  BUT, I cannot give out copies of Star Office
> > to all my students and staff to take home and install on their PCs
> > for FREE.  I can with OpenOffice!  This is why we use OpenOffice. 
> Richard,
> 
> You can give all of your students, their parents, alumni, faculty and
> friends Star Office for free. 

Unless its changed, in the UK you have to send vouchers to Sun and they
send you a disc and the vouchers cost a small amount to cover the disc. 

>  You'll find templates, examples, more fonts, better rendering, etc.
> with Star Office. You'll also find accredited curriculum,
> certifications, etc. for free.

There are some added value features with Star Office, but there is also
the loss of some other things. In the end it depends on individual
circumstances whether SO or OO.o is the best route. If you take the Sun
Academic initiative in a UK context, its not that relevant to most
schools and certainly not primary schools. In fact I bet I have more
schools committed to theINGOTs.org with OpenOffice.org in the UK than
Sun has for its Academic Initiative. That's not to say that people
should't do both, its just that I doubt there are many instances where
it makes any difference whether SO or OO.o is used. In fact with
theINGOTs.org they can use any Office suite that enables the criteria to
be met and for every certificate issued there will be a small
contribution to Free Software development.

WWW.theINGOTs.org

> The Sun Academic Initiative  can be found at:
> 
> http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/edu/programs/sai/
> 
>       * Overview
>       * Program Benefits
>       * Certification
>       * Applications
>       * Courses Available
>       * Contact Us
>       * Instructor Led Agreements
> http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/edu/solutions/staroffice.html
> 
> Explains for to obtain Star Office for free.
> 
> The Open Source Software Institute has an initiaitve to obtain college
> credit for people who take the courses through our University Sponsor.
> That will come in the future.
> 
> 
-- 
ian <ian.lynch2@ntlworld.com>