Point by point rebuttal for your school management...

(1) *Only* by using OpenOffice can you satisfy the file transfer requirement. Given the price of MS Office, it is inappropriate to assume that all households have access, particularly to the latest version. While de facto most do, it is common in less well off households for the copy of MS Office (and indeed Windows) to be illegal. By adopting an office suite that is free to use, and moreover uses a published file format, you ensure all students can have easy file transfer i.e. those who do not already have an (licenced) office suite that can read the OpenOffice file formats can be simply given a copy of OpenOffice.

(2) To assume a permanent commitment to SIMS as the school management system is, to say the least, unrealistic. Limited at best, it is written on a proprietary backend which locks the organisation into additional expenditure. To get a glimpse of one possible future, go see http://schooltool.org.

(3) Most schools demonstrate very limited skills in the use of ICT i.e. what they do know is immediately transferrable to OpenOffice/KDE with only minimal training (30 minutes plus a cheat sheet). Industry reviewers concluded only advanced users Of MS Office would be penalised as the more complex functions are harder to reproduce in OpenOffice etc.. Conversely advanced users adapted easier as they were often the people prepared to try things out! Tests on KDE (3.2 from memory) found with careful setup, many users failed to even notice they were not on Windows.

(4) As you say, Karoshi, or for those who need commercial involvement to be comfortable, Novell do a very nice line in config tools. Further, managing a modern, complex MS setup requires skills most schools choose not to pay for, and either struggle along with a system that is either full of holes, unchanged since a company installed it (and thus no longer meeting the real ICT needs of the school) or has a third party software package managing the configuration. Many schools still working with NT4 and 2k at the backend are going to be shocked to find running 2k3 needs support staff to be retrained.

The current issue in schools is that they are protected from proper ICT audits. Were a non-education IT consulting firm charged with evaluating the average school's implementations, I assure you they would be less than complimentary ;-).

Cheers

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: David Selby [mailto:IT@st-leonards.durham.sch.uk]
Sent: Fri 1/7/2005 12:13 PM
To: 'Thomas Dyer'
Cc: 'SuSe'
Subject: RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] BETT


Well me and by ITC coordinator tried to go MS free 3 years ago and was shot
down in flames by the county and senior management team we thing it's the
only way forward for schools and school budgets but they came back with the
following requirements that we need to meet before they would even consider
It

1. you must be able to covert files easily between home and school i.e. MS
office
2. sims must work on the system.
3. no loss of present skills
4. ease of set up so the skills required can be easily be found in other
people. IE should the present Network team leave

Now star office has most of the MS office problem solved
Karoshi has 4 sorted with some not tec written how to's if I should leave
And works with a sims server not sure how yet but am looking at this

That leaves access and no lose of skills if star gets access sorted my team
can soon show how present skills are not lost but enhanced with the
migration we are going to try and get them to go MS free in our next up date
faze which is In 3 years. So I am starting to but together the information I
need.

It would be nice if some people in my county would let us know if they are
even looking in to the feasibility of Durham schools going Linux but our
support team has just lost its only real Linux champion to RM
-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Dyer [mailto:dyert@xdevelopment.co.uk]
Sent: 07 January 2005 09:55
To: David Selby
Cc: 'SuSe'
Subject: RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] BETT

David,

I'd suggest that Rekall is actually a better "database" teaching tool than
MS Access, and might fit with the requirements of the AS / A2 courses.

I've done quite a lot of testing of it with a highly customised linux
distro (based loosely on SuSE 9.2) which we're using for some office
desktop installations.

Alternatively, OpenOffice 1.9x has some interesting ideas at "database" in
the latest beta, which show some promise.

>From a "commercial" point of view, I'm interested in finding out how many
schools are actually currently rolling out Linux onto their desktops.



Thomas Dyer
Xdevelopment llp


On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, David Selby wrote:

> Karoshi is grate where were you 3 years ago before we went down the
> Microcost line.
>
> The only thing missing is an Microsoft access clone to do the database
> section of the AS and A2 courses
>
> You would still need some Linux knowledge to set up a relational database
> which is simple to use.
>
> I will be upgrading the whole school again in between 3 and 4 years funds
> depending and will be watching this project with interest
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: linuxgirlie [mailto:linuxgirlie@gmail.com]
> Sent: 06 January 2005 13:51
> To: SuSe
> Subject: Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] BETT
>
> linuxschools.com will be there, paul and I haven't got a stand but we
> will be wandering around on thursday 13th with a laptop in tow, if
> anyone wants a demo of Karoshi.
>
> Can't think at the present time of anyone else who sticks in my mind.
>
> Jo
>
>
>
>
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