RE: [seul-edu] Progress on Linux in Portland Schools

[Chris Puttick <chris@centralmanclc.com>]

Some responses to that poorly thought-out but common argument:

(i) social inclusion (I)- the children from poor families are unlikely to
have access to a legal copy of MS Office, while the school could distribute
copies of OOo for an Aussie dollar;

(ii) social inclusion (II) - OOo is available in an amazing number of
minority and majority languages, and others can be freely added - this is
essential for children trying to learn a language, whether for development
or as part of living in a new country;

(iii) by saving money on their office suite licences, they could afford to
provide more access to ICT within the school;

(iv) schools should be educating general case, not specific - e.g. use of
office software not MMS Office - companies prefer people with all-round word
processing/spreadsheet skills not those who will need retraining (see point
vi)

(v) your average 11 year old will not be in work for 5-7 years (UK truth -
not sure of Oz comparison) - what ever application specific skills you give
them now will be irrelevant by the time they leave school;

(vi) businesses survive by having a better cost-base that their competitors
- it costs no more to use OOo than MSOffice (and now outputs PDFs!) and it
costs less to buy and upgrade; ergo companies will switch to it over time
(2-3 years, I'd stake my career on it).

Cheers

Chris Puttick

-----Original Message-----
From: Philip Immoos
To: seul-edu@seul.org
Sent: 9/16/03 12:26 PM
Subject: RE: [seul-edu] Progress on Linux in Portland Schools

Yes mate

Teachers seem to not understand the consept of software can be low cost
( The only cost is there time) and good quality. I have asked the IT
teachers to trial OOo but they keep saying thet industary user MSoffice.
I keep saying that it is so similar it is not funny. (espesaly when you
are teaching primary school kids).

Or is that they are scared or lasy.





On Tue, 2003-09-16 at 00:25, Schmitt, Mark wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 13, 2003 at 02:16:06PM -0700, Christian Einfeldt wrote:
> > Hi, I'm an attorney in San Francisco who is volunteering to help
> > OpenOffice.org (OOo) in its October marketing push to attract 
> > attention to the use of open source software, and particularly OOo
in 
> > schools.
> 
> I have an interesting anecdote for your marketing push.  I work at a
private
> high school that has been a "laptop school" for several years, and
just
> moved the faculty to Tablet PCs.  The tablet version of Excel is not
always
> able to print properly.  My school has been working for better than a
week
> to get the patch that Microsoft claims to have. 
> 
> What makes this applicable to OOo?  Well, to overcome the issue, I
have
> installed OOo and it prints all my old Excel files just fine.  (Of
course,
> those files are no longer .xls, but .xsc)
> 
> Just one more example of open source having higher quality.
> 
> (now if only I could convince other teachers to abandon M$ Office)
> 
> 
> Mark Schmitt