[K12OSN] Open Office

[William Fragakis]

A couple of very short comments:
1) Especially for K-5 and most ordinary word-processing, AbiWord is fast
and fits the bill. It's very ltsp friendly: loads fast, small foot
print. We highly recommend it.

2) To those who insist that MS Word be taught specifically - Office
'07/Vista will be probably a bigger change from Office XP than OO is.
But more importantly, a lot of kids won't be in the workforce for
another 5,10,15 years. Think how useful it would be to be leaving
college now with an intimate knowledge of Word Perfect or Word 5.0? (Not
that there aren't places that still use it.) There is the significant
probability that students will be using web based WP such as writely,
zohowriter or the generation of WP after that. It's the concepts they
must understand, not where the icons or menu items are.

regards,
William Fragakis
morrisbrandon.com

On Fri, 2006-09-22 at 01:42 -0400, k12osn-request at redhat.com wrote:
> Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 10:08:28 -0700
> From: Huck <dhuckaby at paasda.org>
> Subject: Re: [K12OSN] Open Office
> To: "Support list for open source software in schools."
>         <k12osn at redhat.com>
> Message-ID: <4512C70C.8000506 at paasda.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> Mel, I used those Southwestern books and I agree they were very good
> to 
> teach MS-OFFICE from...and for the most part when learning an 
> application you MUST DO in order to learn.
> 
> But the concepts of word processing and spread sheet creation require
> no 
> books what-so-ever. You have menus, you have toolbars, you have F1
> for 
> searchable help ;)
> 
> Explaining the purpose of those three most 10yr olds can teach 
> themselves almost any application given a few set of rules of what
> the 
> OUTCOME is to look like, and what 'pieces' of the applications puzzle 
> they should be required to use in order to complete the given task.
> 
> I know it doesn't help us when the NAD requires us to demonstrate
> what 
> curriculum we utilized ;)
> 
> The books mentioned at http://getopenoffice.org can be found here:
> http://www.cafepress.com/getopenoffice/1040958
> 
> I have Core Office Suite, Comprehensive Writer, Comprehensive Impress
> & 
> Draw...and they are similar to the Southwestern books...although the 
> versions I have aren't nearly as glossy eye-candyish.
> 
> --Huck
> 
> Mel Wade wrote:
> > I listened to the interview about Open Office.  I gave it
> consideration 
> > but so far have not moved that direction due to the lack of good 
> > teaching materials.  I am using materails from Southwestern that is 
> > project based.  I really like it, because I believe that people
> learn by 
> > doing, not by hearing...  But I haven't seen anything like this for
> Open 
> > Office.
> > 
> > Am I missing something?
> > 
> > -- 
> > Mel Wade