[K12OSN] OpenOffice Curriculum

[george kocke]

On Tue, 2006-03-28 at 09:03, Eric Brown wrote:

> The only thing that should change in the business teachers operations
> is learning that what they want may be under Tools instead of Insert,
> or that a particular button may be on the left instead of above.

Have you seen any of the screenshots floating around for the beta
versions of Office 12?

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/ui/overview.mspx

The interface has been almost completely redesigned. I've not used it so
I can't say how well it works, but people who hate OpenOffice due to
things not being where they expect are in for a very rude awakening when
Office 12 is forced upon them.

I believe this will be an advantage for OpenOffice unless OO copies the
new Office interface. OO will then have more in common with well-known
MS Office versions than the newest version of MS Office.

> As a math teacher, I do not teach how to do calculus using the TI-86,
> I teach calculus.  We use some tools to help us do that.  One tool is
> the TI-86.  I think that if the curriculum in the business department
> is Word Processing Using Word, it does need to be re-written to say
> Word Processing (Period).

A tactic that I've successfully used in past arguments such as this is
to demonstrate that the basic concepts of using office type applications
has not changed since the introduction of the Apple Lisa. I've actually
used a Mac SE running a 1986 version of Microsoft Works to prove my
point. Older versions of various programs and operating systems can
easily be installed in emulators such as QEMU or virtual machines such
as VMware. I enjoy watching reactions to my copy of Windows 1.01 running
under QEMU!

-- 
george kocke <webmaster at vol.org>
http://www.vol.org