On Sun, 2003-10-05 at 10:16, garry saddington wrote:
Thanks for your replies Ian, it has been an interesting exchange and I agree with your arguments regarding OO.I am not trying to detract from the project. Indeed, we use it throughout the school for our main office suite both in our Windows room and our two Linux rooms for exactly the reasons you state, and with the improvements in 1.1 we may use it for all our KS3 and KS4 database work.
Great, would yu be willing to be interviewed by someone as a case study? Sun are looking for examples of OO.o deployment for case studies at the moment. If you are willing, E-mail Ryan.Singer@Sun.com as he is compiling the studies.
What I was trying to point out is that there is already a useable database solution, albeit running only on Linux at the moment.
That is useful because we do have a need for this in some other schools. I'll get it publicised.
Perhaps I am being a little too simplistic when Open source to me means open source all the way, including the OS?
That is what we are aiming for but we need to get there and we need a variety of paths to suit different people. There are many roads to Nirvana. If we crack general productivity tools ie office, there is very little reason for big corporates/governments to stay with Windows. Once that happens, the valuable applications for education will get ported. Most won't be FLOSS to start with so I see a general order of Office - Operating system - all the other specialist apps. That's why I think the first priority is to put the limited resources into the Office bit rather than worrying about Interactive Whiteboards etc. Ok, if someone has a specific interest but I have limited time so I have picked to back the thing likely to have the biggest effect.
By the way we do not use KDE but Icewm and students take to it very quickly and intuitively.
Choice is good. Sounds a bit paradoxical to then back OO.o but Once OO.o establishes an open file format it opens things up for every other project.
My only concern is why are the teachers you mention teaching ICT, although I have come across this attitude with some younger pupils, one asked me "Why do we have to learn to use a word processor, can't I just use Publisher instead?"
There are a lot of teachers teaching ICT who really know very little about it or are very set in their ways. That's just the way it is and we have to take this into account when marketing FLOSS.
If I can be of any help to you, please do not hesitate to let me know.
Join the OO.o Educ project and start some kids on theINGOTs.org
certification scheme. We have an aim to get as many OO.o CDs to students
around the world as possible starting with a launch for OO.o day on the
13th October, the third anniversary of the project. Anyone is welcome to
join in, simply download the ISO burn some discs. (There are proper
labels for download on the OO.o website) and give them to kids, or send
them to local schools. Get the kids involved. I have made it a
requirement for the Silver INGOT qualification that kids can burn a CD
and send it to someone in need (citizenship) so this fits that model. If
you want to send me discs you can and I'll get them to a contact I have
in Malaysia who can use them in schools where there is no access to
broadband.
If you take part in theINGOTs ICT certification scheme you can help
generate income for free software projects. Info on the web site
www.theINGOTs.org. We already have two EAZs and probably 40 schools
committed to INGOTs and growing all the time. Most are schools applying
for specialist schools status and they are building certification
targets into their development plans.
To subscribe to the OO.o Education list
educ-subscribe@marketing.openoffice.org
The new ISO for OO.o 1.1 is at
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/openoffice/contrib/iso/1.1.0/ or
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/incoming/ (Seems Eberhardt had to go somewhere,
and may not have had time to put it in the correct place. You could also
try PlanetMirror ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/openoffice/contrib/iso/
Hope this helps.
--
ian