penfold Posted January 23, 2009 Posted January 23, 2009 Another thing to consider is also your staff. Its easy sitting here spouting about which software we should be using and what is the standard, but we aren't the ones who will be using it to teach(Expcet to show the teachers how to use it). I have installed it when we couldn't afford the licences for MS and were due to get new clients which were quoted with an MS Office licence. OO was installed through the school in the short term, but when we had enough licences of MS throughout it was requested that OO was removed so it didn't cause confusion for the pupils. Very few teachers would use it as to learn a new software would take up too much time. Ironically the teachers who used it the most were the ones who were doing presentations with pupils for the first time. They hadn't used Powerpoint before so when they used OO for the first time they didn't know the difference.
tmcd35 Posted January 23, 2009 Posted January 23, 2009 Funnily enough, Penfold, this is actually one of my two arguments for OpenOffice! The difference, at least in UI, between Office 2003 and OpenOffice are quite minimal compare to the difference between Office 2003 and Office 2007. Don't get me wrong, I've by no means made my own mind up as to which way I'll recommend to the school that we go. There are other things to take into consideration on our route to standardisation. In my experience 99% of teachers want something they are familiar with (Office 2000/XP/03/OO) and that will open M$ formatted Word/Excel/Powerpoint docs. The attraction of OO is easy... Free M$ Format Compatible Office 97/2000/XP/03 Classic UI Cross Platform - exact same program on Win/Mac/Linux Can give away copies for kids to use on home PC
Hightower Posted January 23, 2009 Posted January 23, 2009 I wouldn't move to OpenOffice here (yet) purely because it doesn't provide the same features (as already mentioned) when compared to MS Office (yet!). Also the fact that our licenses are already paid for for Office 2003. In the days when Office 2003 are becoming obsolete and we're looking to upgrade (which to be fair will be quite a while away) then OpenOffice might be a solution.
CyberNerd Posted January 23, 2009 Posted January 23, 2009 I wouldn't move to OpenOffice here (yet) purely because it doesn't provide the same features (as already mentioned) when compared to MS Office (yet!). Becta studied this in detail, they concluded that the features of MSOffice were aimed at business, not education and that none of 'extra' features in MSoffice were 'must have' compared to other office suites (including openoffice) http://publications.becta.org.uk/download.cfm?resID=28199
featured_spectre Posted January 23, 2009 Posted January 23, 2009 We have OpenOffice throughout the school apart from where SIMS is used. Reason being is that we dont have to pay M$ for it, and we can have the kids working on M$ Office 2007 at home and the files work perfectly in the school. Also another thing we like about it is the fact that if the kids can't afford M$ office or anything, we burn it to a disk for them and they use it at home. Gives our school a good name and its win/win for us as it means we know the kids that we have given a copy too!
SimpleSi Posted January 23, 2009 Posted January 23, 2009 I promote the use of OpenOffice in my schools but it can't be defended on the basis of functionality! It is inferior once you move beyond simple office requirements. e.g multimedia insertion into documents/presentations is diabolical and thats a prime requirement in KS2. I only ever attempt to do this in schools with very high tech teachers - its not for the faint hearted (if you don't believe me - try recording a sound and inserting it into Impress - its 6 clicks in Powerpoint and all the menu options make sense ) An online community/ webspace for submitting work is much more flexible than using an application such as MSOffice or OpenOffice, it deals with images, movies, chat and all the things that you cannot do in a word processor alone. With the greatest respect, how reliable, how high is the TCO and in REAL practice how available is it to everyone. Don't get me wrong - I'd love to be able to have the sort of facility your talking about but I believe the facilities (Servers / high bandwidth connections) are not available to normal schools. Online movie uploading - in the real world ????? Or are you gigabit to the desktop with terrabit backbones Name you platform regards Simon
tmcd35 Posted January 23, 2009 Posted January 23, 2009 Also the fact that our licenses are already paid for for Office 2003. In the days when Office 2003 are becoming obsolete and we're looking to upgrade (which to be fair will be quite a while away) then OpenOffice might be a solution. Unfortunately this is the situation I find myself in. Office 2000 is the closest thing to a standard here. The licenses for Office 2003 are not all bought and paid for. Do I payout for Office 2007 licenses or look at a free alternative?
Zoom7000 Posted January 23, 2009 Posted January 23, 2009 We are using Office 2003 here. We've had Software Assurance upgrades for 3/4 of our licenses for Office 2007 since before it came out. However, I doubt we will be performing this upgrade anytime soon because the Head of IT says it will mean they'll have to change all their worksheets and that the kids won't know how to use it! Little does he know, that almost all the kids here have it pirated at home and some even have portable Office 2007 apps on their pen drives! I just think he's too scared of the ribbon!
featured_spectre Posted January 23, 2009 Posted January 23, 2009 well Office 2007 is rubbish for the education environment. The extras that they have implimented onto it have forced it to be rubbish and too extensive for what is required. IF they did a version aimed at the educational sector then I may be inclined to get a copy, but until then, Open Office wins for us hands down as it does what we want, when we want it too.
penfold Posted January 23, 2009 Posted January 23, 2009 Why not install OO in addition to what you have already? Even if this is only done in 1 IT suite you can request a willing teacher to trial it for you and see what feedback you get. If it gets a negative one then you pretty much have your answer. If the teacher has positive results then you can use them as an example to the other more reluctant teachers for the transition. As you said ealier, moving to 2007 is different to ealier versions (when I had this problem it was looking at installing 2003 as we couldn't afford licences for the whole school for 2007). OO is a real alternative, but you will need to test it with the course content to ensure you can complete the pupils sylabus.
HodgeHi Posted January 23, 2009 Posted January 23, 2009 MS removed VB support from MSOffice on the mac, so OpenOffice now supports VB better than MSOffice (on a mac). For cross platform compatibility, OpenOffice is the way forwards. Apparently this is going to be replaced in the next version. How well though is anyones guess. I suppose we will just have to wait and see. It's a good job i don't use any
k-strider Posted January 23, 2009 Posted January 23, 2009 since we are on the schools agreement we have deployed office 2K3 everywhere. a select few teachers have 2K7. 2K7 is a pain to deploy unlike 2K3 hence I haven't done it. we use GPO and MSI deployment method for everything we can. I have deployed Open Office 2.2 and now 3 everywhere too since it to is easy to deploy.. though not found a good way of getting round the pesky registration... easily Unfortunately OO isn't used all that much, though I have started to use it more and more myself. I guess the staff and students tend to stick to what they know which is MS word. I wouldn't like to take MS office of people as I know apart from just being used by everyone it also forms a large part of the ICT carric at present. Though i would dearly like people to use OO more but its just never really happened.
kesomir Posted January 23, 2009 Posted January 23, 2009 I have deployed Open Office 2.2 and now 3 everywhere too since it to is easy to deploy.. though not found a good way of getting round the pesky registration... easily mandatory profiles for students does it - just click through and save the profile.
Zoom7000 Posted January 24, 2009 Posted January 24, 2009 2K7 is a pain to deploy unlike 2K3 hence I haven't done it. we use GPO and MSI deployment method for everything we can. Are you sure? I deploy Office 2007 to our office and a few other locations and I certainly find it's easier to deploy than Office 2003. Infact, updates are even easier! You just download them and put them into the updates folder. If you are having problems, read this thread... Office 2007, Unattended Setup & Fine-tuning - MSFN Forums 2
k-strider Posted January 26, 2009 Posted January 26, 2009 I don't get why they broke the setup though so you cant just through computer settings, software settings, deployed apps, attach the MSI and then give the the Transform you created... but that's another issue really... I got as far as making the deployed folder and MSP and i do like the way you can slap the patches in one folder and they get deployed too.. but what logic do you use to test to see if its been installed and if not install it... i read if you use startup scripts to push the setup you could (especially if you just ghosted a whole room) end up with the start-up script terminating because it took to long... and then office doesn't get deployed correctly.. would be interested to know how you initially push the setup... and the logic for it to auto deploy if the machine was ghosted and therefore not installed..
moggy Posted March 3, 2009 Author Posted March 3, 2009 Still on the open source cost reduction bandwagon although the more I research it the more I feel uncomfortable about moving the wholeschool (apart from Admin with SIMS) over to Open Source apps. We are a secondary with 6th form and when I talk to teachers, mainly IT, I get words from them which say the curriculum is so geared around M$ Office products they couldn't get on with Open Office. In addition they say Publisher and Access are vital products in delivering the curriculum. Firstly if you are a secondary with Open Source applications (we use Windows XP PCs and 2003 server) do the teachers have problems with the heavily M$ Office biased coursework and support material, and, secondly, what products do you use instead of Publisher and Access.
Richard_Finnigan Posted March 3, 2009 Posted March 3, 2009 Teaching primary age children I have found that context sensitive tool ribbons have lowered the accessable age range of Mediator and Corel Painter by one and two years respectively so I can now consider using Matchware Mediator with Year 5s and I can use Painter in a limited way with Year 4s. It's all about exposing functionality to the user. On the basis of this experience I am putting in a bid to have Office 2007 installed in the ICT suite. Open Office does have its own little context sensitive tool ribbon that pops up underneath the main toolbar but with young children the size of the icons makes a big difference so my vote goes the MS Office way.
mac_shinobi Posted March 3, 2009 Posted March 3, 2009 I've not read all the posts ( so appologies if I missed anything ) Anyway - Not sure on if SIMS requires MS Office for some of the functions however if the curriculum side needs vba ( for macros then ) it would be ms office as I dont think open office supports VBA - could be wrong there. I do know that open office uses other languages for doing its macros which may or may not be an issue. Open Office imo is better at recovery of documents and I also like the convert to pdf function of it.
Richard_Finnigan Posted March 3, 2009 Posted March 3, 2009 Open Office has its own version of Basic and both VBA and Open Office Basic have a lot of good tutorial pages and forums on the net.
PaulDH Posted March 3, 2009 Posted March 3, 2009 Yes unfortunately those nice people at Capita will only support M$ products for their most reliable and stable application............. Moving on................ We deployed OO into our IT suites and found that the students loved it, even a few die hard teachers use it, but I guess that's because they have an option rather than me forcing it upon them. If its free why hide it? A very good thread, thanks guys, I found it useful and fun.. Paul
moggy Posted March 9, 2009 Author Posted March 9, 2009 Firstly if you are a secondary with Open Source applications (we use Windows XP PCs and 2003 server) do the teachers have problems with the heavily M$ Office biased coursework and support material, and, secondly, what products do you use instead of Publisher and Access. Still not clear on whether any of you secondary schools have gone totally Open Office/Open Source and how do you handle MS Access and Publisher?
featured_spectre Posted March 9, 2009 Posted March 9, 2009 (edited) Access = Open Office Base Publisher = Scribus whilst base is not as good as access I will admit, it does the job just fine. Also I have not been able to find a program apart from publisher that opens .pub files Edited March 10, 2009 by featured_spectre 1
moggy Posted March 10, 2009 Author Posted March 10, 2009 Thanks Nephilim. Are you at a secondary school and are you completely Open Source?
featured_spectre Posted March 10, 2009 Posted March 10, 2009 I am a middle school, and no we are not completely open source, however we are going down that route. Only people that have MS Office is the admin team, everyone else has Open Office. But we are still currently reliant on XP and Server 2003 for our school for the time being until we work a solution out. Being entirely open source will mean we can stick our fingers up at MS. 1
rolfea Posted March 16, 2009 Posted March 16, 2009 We've pushed out Open Office to all our machines. I don't think students actually know what it is however. I wish they would use it more, I love it. However at the moment I'm the guinea pig for testing office 2007, I hate it. If I knew how to lock down Linux i'd put that on every pc.
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