On Thursday 30 October 2003 08:28, vernon LEVY wrote:
<me> Here is the reply from edexcel about using Linux in their gcse courses. It's worrying. Please tell me our opinions. </me>
I think that you are reading more into the response than actually exists.
In response to your email, as per advice from the Principal Moderator, I can confirm that the GCSE course is not dependent on any particular software, therefore centres can use any platform they like.
There will be centres using non mainstream platforms like Apple and Acorn, it may be worth your while trying to find such a centre and asking them how they cope. It would not be acceptable to pin a course onto a single operating system.
Examples of standard and extended are Microsoft based so your centre would need to be careful in their justification of Extended project work.
The above statement is merely factual. The exemplar work is Microsoft based simply because it is the most popular operating system in use in schools at the moment and as such, the exemplar material needs to be sympathetic with the user base. Exercising care in the justification of extended project work is applicable to all projects irrespective of the operating system/platform/software. Good quality documentation and annotation as always will guide moderators to the marks.
I re-iterate, you have read too much into the response. If you and your pupils are confident users of the software that you intend to use for the projects, then there's nowt to worry about. It's your responsibility to make sure that the coursework matches the specs and there's nothing standing in the way of Linux and Linux applications doing so . Just do it!
Thanks for the encouragement. It's hard working in isolation here in Spain as there is no one to compare notes with and rumours about us changing os get the better of us at times. Still, it would be good to see how an extended piece of coursework looks on microsoft. Cheers. Steve.