[K12OSN] OpenOffice Curriculum

[William Fragakis]

Yet another problem - when this arises, please note that the millions 
of students in India, China, Africa, Europe and elsewhere probably 
aren't using M'soft and it's these students that our students will be 
competing against, not Johnny down the street. Please don't take this 
as a slam on any of those countries/regions mentioned. It's not. Dell 
(as one example they'd be familiar with) hires in Texas, India, Ireland 
and elsewhere. If you want a job with Dell, you had better be as good 
as any kid from any of those places.

Fifteen years ago, IBM owned the PC business. Now they don't even make 
a stick of hardware. Pity the poor child back then that had to learn 
only to use Lotus on an IBM PC running DOS because that's what everyone 
"uses". He'd be graduating now from college ready to... deliver pizza?

I know I'm preaching to the choir but these are points that make open 
minded people stop a moment and think. The ones with closed minds you 
can't reach anyway....

regards,
William
On Mar 28, 2006, at 2:11 PM, k12osn-request at redhat.com wrote:

> Message: 15
> Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 09:56:03 -0600
> From: Petre Scheie <petre at maltzen.net>
> Subject: Re: [K12OSN] OpenOffice Curriculum
> To: "Support list for opensource software in schools."
> 	<k12osn at redhat.com>
> Message-ID: <44295C93.6030805 at maltzen.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Just one problem with the "It's a MS world out there": It's not true.  
> Yes, there are
> many Windows computers in the world, but there are also many 
> Macintoshes, there are many
> places where WordPerfect is the word processor, there are many places 
> where Novell
> Netware is the file server, there are many places where Lotus Notes is 
> the email system,
> and so on.  People who say it's an MS world are mostly revealing that 
> they don't know
> much about the computing world and that they are essentially afraid of 
> their computer in
> that they won't be able to make it work if things aren't exactly as 
> they expect.  As has
> been pointed out on this list many times, these fear-driven statements 
> come from adults,
> not the kids; the kids quickly adapt to whatever is put in front of 
> them.
>
> While they haven't abandoned MS Office (yet), I did get my school to 
> write its standards
> to say that kids should learn 'word processing' instead of 'MS Word' 
> and so on, by
> pointing out that ten years ago Word Perfect and Lotus 123 were the 
> dominant apps in
> most businesses, and that, as David has pointed out, the kids should 
> be learning the
> concepts, not the specific implementations which change with each new 
> version.
>
> Petre
>
> cisna-barry at wc235.k12.il.us wrote:
>> Hello List,
>>
>> Thanks for eveyone sharing what they have had to overcome in just 
>> trying
>> to get the Opensource programs initiated into their schools. Im very 
>> much
>> in the same boat at the school i am at , in that the last 
>> superintendent
>> was very receptive to Linux,due to the $$ savings and availabilty of 
>> help
>> from message boards like this one,and it being a "community effort". 
>> We
>> have a new superintedent this year due to the fact that our school and
>> another school "up the road" merged,there for, the new school 
>> board,etc.
>> The first words from the new superintendent when trying to explain the
>> benefits of Opensource/Linux was "Well weather you like it or not Its 
>> a
>> Microsoft world out there". Need I say more?:(. Bottom line around 
>> here is
>> "well its, free but how long will OOo stay free",,or something 
>> similar.
>> this was another question about Linux/ K12LTSP viabilty. Im sure you 
>> all
>> have had the same frustration, in diffenrent ways when "preaching" 
>> about
>> Linux/ K12LTSP.
>> As said earlier kids will pickup very quickly on the "bells and 
>> whistles"
>> of each app, but certain  teachers just have the same mundain routine,
>> sort of like,, "We should have Apples to do such and such".
>> But then again .I m just a lowly peon in the scheme of things:)
>> Just my 2 cents.
>>
>>
>> Barry Cisna
>>
>> ___