Just been asked.....

[tosca925]

Did he have 666 on his head...........?

[AlexB]

I wonder when the monopolies commission will spot that in only one area of education, a closed, monopolistic, software suite and OS are being REQUIRED to gain a public qualification.

The exam boards' defence will be that all they require of students is to use word processors and spreadsheets, 99.9% of schools decide to use MS Word and Excel for these tasks, but there's nothing saying that they we HAVE to use MS. They (allegedly) use vendor-independent phrases although it is very clear which application they had in mind.

 

DiDA...

 

Admittedly slightly off track, but you are required to use certain software

[localzuk]

I'd love to be able to roll out Ubuntu on our machines, or use Edubuntu with thin clients. It would be marvelous! Save us £5k a year in licenses

[CyberNerd]

The exam boards' defence will be that all they require of students is to use word processors and spreadsheets, 99.9% of schools decide to use MS Word and Excel for these tasks, but there's nothing saying that they we HAVE to use MS. They (allegedly) use vendor-independent phrases although it is very clear which application they had in mind.

 

Hear about On-screen testing?

 

City and Guilds GOLA Requires Windows

Edexcel Onscreen testing Requires Windows

RM KS3 Requires Windows

 

The only way for schools to opt out of MS tax is to change exam boards, but most teachers won't be happy. Also having unecessary lockin to MSOffice with SIMS shows quite how out of touch captia can be.

[webman]

Just to add to that list as well CyberNerd, OCR requires Windows for server and client exam software.

[enjay]

Okay - I stand corrected! I was just thinking at an application level when I posted; I will admit that some exam boards force you into a particular OS.