Zagadka

Thanks to all for your comments. @SYNACK If form follows function, do I understand you to be saying that the function is to prepare our children for the job market? @LeMarchand The school arrange for the provision of laptops through an OEM, although the parents pay (through the nose -it's an independent). Most (all?) admin functions are then locked out so that, for example, connecting to a printer on the child's home network is impossible, IIRC.

Hi there, Does anyone have an opinion on what proportion of school laptops run some form of Windows - or, alternatively, what proportion don't, ie. use OSX or a Linux distro? Am I simply being lazy by assuming it's near 100% Have there been any substantial (or even nationwide) surveys? As a subsidiary question, and I ask here because I reckon ICT staff might have a more impartial view than teachers, to what extent does MS influence the provision of IT education? I work in the pubic sector, where "ICT training" provision essentially boils down to "showing people how to use Word, Excel and Powerpoint". Is that true for our schools as well? I know the KS3 national curriculum is platform neutral, but it would be very easy to substitute "ICT" with "MS Office" throughout the document. Or, are the staff sufficiently competent to be teaching ICT? Does their lack of knowledge translate into an MS dependency? Do support staff think that they could do better? Thoughts? Comments? Anecdotes? Brickbats? FWIW, I ask because my stepdaughter has more than once had homework which was fundamentally about learning to use Excel, and the laptop requirements and admin ownership for her school seem harsh to me.