[K12OSN] OT: any OpenOffice vs. MS Office studies/cases out there?

[David Hopkins]

At the moment, here in Delaware we are looking at across-the-board 20%
budget cuts for everyone.  What we are doing at NCS finally got the
attention of the new administration and they (Dep Secretary of
Education and others) will be visiting soon to see the approach we use
(and a big thanks to everyone on this list for helping me get this
far) to mitigate those cuts.   They can speak with the NCS School
Director if they want. He is huge advocate of Opensource and K12LTSP
(and has been on several 'blue ribbon' committees wrt
education-related initiatives here).  NCS has always been rated the
top Middle School in Delaware since its inception, and has used
Opensource for word processing by students and staff for the last 6
years without any real issues wrt to compatibility. In fact, I have
used OO.org to open MS Office files that couldn't be opened by MS
Office (which I believe others have done as well).

Also, perhaps "culturelly unacceptable" needs to be rephrased "is it
then more culturelly acceptable to layoff teachers and staff, cut
school programs and otherwise degrade the educational system than even
consider moving to an approach that has been shown to work across the
US and around the world?" Maybe it is time to put a spotlight on those
that have that attitude?

David Hopkins
Newark Charter School
Newark Delaware

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 5:22 PM, Alan Hodson <aahodson at episd.org> wrote:
> Having just heard at the highest level in my district that Open Office is "culturally unacceptable here" (border district of 63,000 students) I am wondering if there is someone in our community of users/believers that has come across data/studies that I could use disprove the MS ethos - I know than in Texas, both PlanoISD and SanAntonioISD are huge open source supporters, but I don't know if that has translated there, or anywhere else, into a document that we can hold up as a banner.
> Any ideas?
> Thanks
> Alan Hodson
> Instructional Applications Analyst
> http://links.episd.org/
> -=o=-
>
>
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