From: "adrian.wells"
There is also a wish to keep children in the same environment that they have at home - Teachers aren't known for delving into the unknown. - It makes sense, Office at home, office at school, office in the workplace.
It doesn't unless they have suitable software at home and Office is not suitable software for education (IMO). Lots of our pupils have PCs at home, used for games and a bit of basic word-processing. But they invariably use the RiscPCs at school for not only for all IT coursework (because that's the way we do it) but from choice for almost all the rest as well where there is any degree of complication.
What we need is an OS that is transparent, cheap, difficult to hack and easy to maintain, LINUX appears to be offering two or three out of four at the moment.
The biggest problem I foresee with Linux run locally is that when the bell goes, they save what theyre doing and switch off. The shutdown process is a bit of a bind. -- Martin Devon