Becta take M$ to Office Fair Trading

[maniac]

Rattling MS's cage is a brave move from Becta considering that their interim report tells schools not to install either Office 2007 or Vista. . . .

Whoops, too late for us! We have office 2007 over our entire site now, although it's forced to save in the traditional .DOC file format via a group policy.

Mike.

[nathan]

Do you guys not worry that your kids are going to be learning to use open office and then when they get into the real world have to dive into the office suite as its probs going to be used by business?

Just a question?

No, Kids should get taught the principles - teaching an application is a bad idea. It's better kids get taught the fundamentals - applications change, but the fundamentals do not, MS wasn't always the dominant Office application, things change, so do interfaces.

Yeah i see what your saying, and i think your right.

[russdev]

Whats the percentage of use in regards to say open office and microsoft office 10% to 90%?

Do you guys not worry that your kids are going to be learning to use open office and then when they get into the real world have to dive into the office suite as its probs going to be used by business?

Just a question?

Ok not to go into whole this software vrs this software debate I ask you few simple questions.

1) When one of your students gets new mobile phone what do most do?
2) When a adult (excluding techies) gets new mobile what do most do?
3) When a student goes on newest social network website what do they not do.

Answers Are
1)They start using it and chuck manual in the draw until they run into problem they can't solve.
2)They read manual then turn phone on
3)They ignore the big help button and explore it.

We as adults have to get away from this thing of it is different to what they are use to so they won't be able to use it.

If ict sats taught us anything it is that students can use anything thrown in front of them they just need time to explore it. School staff has issues over using something not seen before not students.

Russell

[nathan]

yeah, as i said in my previous post i really do agree with your logic! i was pretty drunk when i posted before, but im even more drunk now! how sad is that, thinking about work on a friday night when i've just got in!

[plock]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7063716.stm - when reading the article, I was thinking... how many schools are actually using 'Open Source' such as 'Open Office' for example.

Personally I would go for it, think of the savings in licensing costs? How many of you would go for it?

We are running Office 2003 simply because that's what everyone is used to - but 'Open Office' isn't that different!

Let me know your thoughts. Worryingly, it's a Friday night, 12:30am, I'm under the influence of alcohol and I'm still thinking about work!!

[beeswax]

Do you guys not worry that your kids are going to be learning to use open office and then when they get into the real world have to dive into the office suite as its probs going to be used by business?

Just a question?

No, Kids should get taught the principles - teaching an application is a bad idea. It's better kids get taught the fundamentals - applications change, but the fundamentals do not, MS wasn't always the dominant Office application, things change, so do interfaces.

This is partly what the KS3 online tests were all about, and I feel that some of the problems arising from this were directly related to teaching staff not grasping this fact and getting stuck in the "This doesn't look like Word" rut.

We recommend Open Office to anyone wanting a suite of applications and not being able to afford the MS product, and give them a brief run through of what it will do.

Office 2007? We still have pupils bringing in work done in Works.

[beeswax]

yeah, as i said in my previous post i really do agree with your logic! i was pretty drunk when i posted before, but im even more drunk now! how sad is that, thinking about work on a friday night when i've just got in!

You think that's bad? 3 hours ago my plane touched down after a week in Tenerife. Yes it was hot and sunny. Found a great venue for next year's conference out there as well.

[HodgeHi]

I think the biggest problem is the fact that like most posts were hinting towards is that Ofice is used so widely. If Becta stopped forcing the use of Office and MS products down the throats of schools and moved towards Open source or alternative apps then the schools would be able to move. If that makes sense.

It starts at the LEAs. They send a document out in .DOC format.

Ain't got office to open it correctly?? Oh dear.

It's things like this that keep the cycle going. It needs to be across the board. It ain't as if it costs money to change or to even have both.

I work in a primary school and have both OS X and XP. OS X runs Neo Office and XP runs Office '03 since we already have the licenses. I won't buy any more though.

I found the only thing that Open Office can't do (and neither can Mac Office) is Macros but our kids don't use them anyhow.

Like someone said, they take what they learn with them. A word processor is a word processor. Tools may be in a different location but at least they can't take it for granted where everything is. :-)

[Pete10141748]

It starts at the LEAs. They send a document out in .DOC format.
Ain't got office to open it correctly?? Oh dear

That happened here last week. Got sent a bunch of .docx's from the LEA, couldn't open them on admin machines as we haven't got 2007 yet. OK, I was able to use the converters but it wasn't ideal.