Simon wrote: <SNIP>
This is on the Select Agreement, these are non-upgradeable licences, if you have MS Office 2000 and want to go to 2003 then buy all the licences again.
And this is where FOSS has the advantage - the individual cost of MS is not necessarily excessive for Schools - but the ongoing costs can be. Once purse-string holders realise that there is support for the FOSS software, then barriers are removed.
Which means another suggestion might be making people aware that there is support for the FOSS applications available.
bursars/business managers/principals are less hassled by staff. I've never met a bunch of people more unwilling to learn something different than teachers.
Amen!!!!!!!!!! If students were as recalcitrant as teachers they would all be on detention every day for failure to even try!
Wouldn't students love that! :)
- there is a lot of scope of FOSS in libraries, but again there is the idea that free cannot be quality
- educational software being available for Linux is a problem, so perhaps a push for FOSS that runs on Windows/MAC as well. It needs to be targeted obviously - eg a D&T teacher would want to know what FOSS CAD and design applications there are. I've had some success with this sort of thing - eventually the only thing keeping them on Windows is Office.
I find it is not Office but the range of other educational software, where the market is too small for authors to do more than a Windows version.
This is probably the single major problem stopping a mass migration to linux desktops.
I have put teachers into OO and not told them - just said it was a new version of Word - they were quite happy!
I've had mixed results with OOo, but nothing insurmountable with training sessions as you mention below.
That is the hardest to convert. Yes, there is OpenOffice and so on, but as I said before teachers really HATE learning new stuff that is not directly in their sphere - they just want to get down to teaching, and learning a new office package is just a nuisance. Perhaps a flyer with some web sites that list available FOSS software or FOSS related sites even?
Teachers have an education mentality, students can't learn unless they teach them, therefore they can't do anything new unless someone runs a course in it. The biggest push I believe to move teachers over to non-MS solutions would be the provision of frequent, cheap training courses (complete with dodgy certificates!)
I'd never thought of the dodgy certificates - what a great idea.
Students are generally very adaptable and will take on a range of software and solutions.
When it boils down to it, students will use whatever the school has. They don't have a lot of say if the staff are behind what is in use. In any case, as you say, students are far more adaptable than staff (generally of course).
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