Is anyone using OpenOfficeStar Office in the classroom?

[Dos_Box]

Please let me know here, particularly Lancashire schools. I've just had someone asking.

[CyberNerd]

we use it, but not in lancs

[Dos_Box]

Could you PM me the details (where and how) please? It is to answer a serious query I have been presented with.

[Geoff]

Already replied on the LancsNGFL forums.

But basically its 80% Oo.org. Everything apart from the Laptops.

[pshuttle]

Its probably not my remit to post this but I may as well try and help out. Until the end of March at my last job I ensured that Open Office was running on all the machines at Mayfield Primary School in Lytham - thats roughly 60 odd PCs.

I use OO on my iMac G5 here at work and on my PC at home.

Pete

[Pear]

We have 30 computers running open office here. They are all in maths, we got some new computers in january but didnt have a licence for office for them (we just take what comes on the machine rather than having a whole school policy :s) so I persuaded the people here that there was no need to buy ms office.

I could see it being used in the future for all departements except IT. I don't think our IT department would accept it because its not the industry standard.

[CyberNerd]

I don't think our IT department would accept it because its not the industry standard.

depends what industry I assume you mean the education industry, LaTeX is the industry standard in maths/physics and there are already countless examples of entire governments migrating to openoffice because of OASIS. Much of the IT industry (SUN,Novell,IBM) ahve already migrated.

As of 2004, a CSC study determined that an astonishing 14% of the large enterprise office systems market are using OSS/FS OpenOffice.org. Consulting firm Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) unsurprisingly found that Microsoft dominates the office suite market, with 95% of the overall share and more than 300 million users worldwide. But surprisingly, they found that the OSS/FS OpenOffice.org has secured 14% of the large enterprise office systems market, with over 16 million downloads and countless CD installations.

[Dos_Box]

I could see it being used in the future for all departements except IT. I don't think our IT department would accept it because its not the industry standard.

The industry standard is the file format, not the manufacturer. It is quite well known that M$ regualrly 'break' from standards to ensure people stay locked into their products OOo ans Star Office are both standards complient M$ Office is not in such that it allows you to open complient files but quite often saves them in a non-complient format.

[Quackers]

I do not see us ever using Open Office or Star Office. We have enough Office 2003 licences, we have well over 100 Office 2000 licences not being used and almost 100 Office 97 licences not being used. We would use those up before going to Open Office. We also plan to move to Office 2007 early next year i really like using the interface on it, so we would have loads of Office 2003 licences doing nothing.

[Geoff]

It's quite ironic but Oo.org 2.x is more compliant with Office '97 than Office 2k3 is!

[mark]

We have Open Office installed alongside MS Office on all our main PC's - that's 230.

[Pear]

The industry standard is the file format, not the manufacturer.

I meant the actual user interface. There is less training required once the students leave school as they should be proficient in ms office and that is what most businesses are using. I know in general terms the interfaces of MSO and OO are very similar but put a teacher infront of OO and they are totally lost (In my school at least, they have "no time" for training). Of course Office 2007 is introducing a new interface which I don't think makes tasks easier so maybe the teachers will change their mind after seeing that. They may prefer the OO interface which will be more similar to what they are used to.

In a similar situation I showed Inkscape to a technology teacher but they prefer to go out and buy Adobe Illustrator even though the computer they have isn't up to the spec.

I would love everyone to use OO and am giving it my backing here in school but sometimes a change cannot be forced on people.

[russdev]

Now this is problem you see we get into debate about the best one to use and what we should be teaching is skills to use any office software so they can adapt to it.

As said before one good thing to come out of ict ks3 tests it forces teaching of ict to teach them office skills not word skills...

Russ

[Geoff]

BTW ODF format is now an ISO standard..

http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standa...60503080915835

[Ric_]

I have StarOffice installed alongside Office 2003. I know a few of the 6th Formers occasionally use it cos they don't have Office at home. Anybody that comes to me and says that they don't have Office gets the reply "download OpenOfice".