On 03/12/2007, at 9:22 PM, Ian Lynch wrote:
On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 20:56 +1100, Jonathon Coombes wrote:
On 03/12/2007, at 7:58 PM, Ian Lynch wrote:
SNIP!
Agreed, but in these levels the computers are not used just for
computer science, but also maths, spelling, art etc. This means that
you have to have a solution to address the bigger area.
Yes, in schools nearly all teach general IT courses to all the
students
at some point so that is the place to reach the biggest market -
English
or maths would do too but the teachers are likely to give office
software less of a priority in those subjects.
Right, but IT is rather specific areas of application, some years may
not even cover office applications. If we look at solutions based
around a range of FLOSS software, I think that we cover a much wider
audience than just the IT courses. There is software out there for
all courses and this takes away the influence of what particular
platform is required.
Of course this is true, but unfortunately they don't decide what
software the university uses or teaches.
Doesn't really matter if they personally use OOo - and if 90% of
students were doing that it's likely to affect the university decision
making. Its going to be very hard to get a whole university to
switch to
OOo from the top down. Quite often departments can make individual
procurement decisions so here at Birmingham the comp sci department
use
FOSS extensively but the rest of the uni doesn't.
Obviously the universities of there are very different to the ones in
Australia. :)
Here you don't get a choice, no matter how many people want it, it is
the choice of the lecturer or faculty as to what you are taught and
what is utilised. Maybe after a few years of hearing "where is OOo?"
all the time, they might start thinking about looking into it, but
that is not what makes it happen.
I agree that different departments can use different software, and
often the comp sci areas are more open to FOSS, but I have seen
universities that are totally Microsoft in the comp sci and accepting
of FOSS in the maths and science areas? So it is often the people in
charge who make the final decision, not the masses in this sense.
If they are smart enough,
they can work within the confines e.g. OOo vs MS Office documents
etc, but if the university wants to teach MS Visual Basic, then no
matter how many Linux stations they use, they cannot convince the
university of its value.
I think it's a lot easier to get 16 year olds in large numbers
using OOo
than to try and get Unis to change technologies such that it has the
same effect on take up.
I think it would be great to see it happen, but I think you are
swimming upstream. It is not that it is impossible, but it seems very
difficult to achieve.
I think if we can provide an environment that works on both Linux and
Windows (and Mac as well) then the schools will soon realise that
they don't need to be forced into one operating system. This can be
done now for a range of applications as seen in the OpenCD project
which provides many applications that work across the platforms and
are suitable for school use. The added advantage FLOSS provides is
that you can give the applications to the students for use at home,
for their parents to use, their churches etc. Rather than being
forced to use what the students have at home.
Agreed, but getting them to know and understand this exists is also
none
trivial. Obvious to us but not obvious to the people in control and to
most of them fairly low down on their list of priorities.
I think getting them to know it exists is the easy part - they can
see this through Internet, promotions, conferences etc. The hard part
is trying to get them to understand why it is beneficial for them to
use it, even if it requires a small amount of change.
Regards
Jonathon
--------------------------
Jonathon Coombes
OOo Knowledgebase:- http://mindmeld.cybersite.com.au
http://www.cybersite.com.au
http://www.training4linux.com
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