john wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> This is not a K12LTSP question, but I hope you can help anyway.
> We're looking into moving all of the computer labs in our district to
> Open Office next year.
> The tech department brought together the teachers who manage these
> labs and after several hours of exploring Word and OO side by side the
> teachers felt comfortable enough to give the o.k. to move forward. Now
> we are trying to plan this rollout.
>
> This rollout is is going to happen on both Windows boxes and LTSP
> nodes, with the majority being on XP/SP2 under Active Directory. Could
> folks who have gone before give me some ideas of what to expect in
> terms of teacher and student needs, complaints etc. I'd love to be
> able to anticipate problems and solutions ahead of time. Are there any
> case studies from schools for OO that anyone could point me at?
>
> TIA!!
Excellent to hear John,
A few points to help you along from experience.
1) It is invariably easier than anticipated.
2) Have printed copies of the OOo Migration Guide available at each
school as well as on the network in PDF.
(Available from
http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/index.html or in
editable form [ODT files] from the OOoAuthors project at
http://oooauthors.org/en/authors/userguide2/migration/published_final/)
3) Identify early adopters at each school and make them your
friends and part of a Migration Support Group. Support them with
poweruser level training, they will reward you by making your life
real easy. Teachers often respond better to face to face assistance
from a local "expert" than they do from email or support desk.
4) Set up a Wiki so that users can share experiences of cool things
that OOo can do as well as solutions to small gotchas. Over time
you'll get a picture of the types of inservice training that your
teachers will need.
5) Never stop communicating. Weekly tips and tricks emails are a
good way of teaching people and keeping them involved in the migration
6) Don't use the version of OOo that comes with the distro
download. Get the latest version from
http://downloads.openoffice.org. At present the latest stable
version is 2.0.3 and it is significantly better than 2.0.2
Some things that some will find annoying at the start.
Registration and licence agreement request Window at first launch from a
new account.
Endusers sometimes are unsure what to do with this. I tell them to
Agree to the licence then check the "Already Registered" radio button.
There is a way to disable this on a Terminal Server system but
unfortunately I've forgotten right at the moment.
Some people don't like the standard toolbar icons. Since 2.0.2 you have
options.
Go to tools>options>Openoffice.org>view and the User has various
options of Style and Size
And NEVER, EVER.. that's NOT EVER show anyone how to get to the Starwars
Game! :)
Cheers
Yo
--
"GET LEGAL - GET OPENOFFICE.ORG"
http://why.openoffice.org
ISO 26300 compliant
Graham Lauder,
OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ
http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html
INGOTs Assessor Trainer
(International Grades in Office Technologies)
www.theingots.org.nz