| More on MS Office vs. Open Source Office and MS vs OpenSource |
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| Written by Ken Task | |||
| Sunday, 30 March 2008 08:06 | |||
Upon what do Elementary school teachers, who state their students shouldn't be short-changed by using OpenOffice, base their perception of the requirements of a students digital future? Their own experience? What their spouse uses at work? The documents that come with their lesson plans or electronic media materials from the textbook publisher? Are any of those true indications of what a 21st Century graduate will need? Change can occur in a relatively short time span ... cases in point: Novell vs MS in the 90's, BetaMax vs VHS, and more recently, HD vs. Blue-Ray. A wise ISD is one that keeps their options open (and open minded) rather than thinking they have the pulse of the industry or global competitive market. Of course it's good to teach children the use of MS Office, but by the same token, ISD's are betting their digital future upon perceptions of what students need to be competitive in a 21st century global market. This is especially true if ISD's teach process with one product rather than concepts using more than one product. Students will grow up to be digital consumers themselves - they are right now. Unfortunately, students are not given a chance to practice being digital consumers, even though there are TEKS that are to address digital consumerism. Since a story was shared in support of the incumbent Office Suite, let me share two of my own (this is NOT shared to begin debate!) My niece, now 25 years wise, is working on her Doctorates at a major University known nation-wide for their work in Virtual Reality. She currently holds Masters degrees in Math and Computer Science. Well, one Xmas, she asked a question ... "What do you think of GenToo Linux?" Huh?!!?? This from a gal that had just 2 Xmas's ago been given a gift of a couple thousand to go shop for a laptop she needed. She had purchased a well known brand running incumbent OS. I asked why she wanted to know. She was tired of her first choice laptop OS getting whacked, etc.. and was tired of having to go to her male counter-parts for "technical assistance" who more often than not, encouraged her to install GenToo Linux!! She had a print out of how to install GenToo Linux that Xmas and was reading up on it before attempting herself. When I asked a few more questions I discovered that she was actually somewhat angry that she wasn't exposed to the existence of Linux during her High School and under-grad years. Her male counter parts weren't either, but that didn't seem to stop them from exploring ... on their own ... ie, not a school! Well, to cut this short, she now owns a MacOSX laptop for personal use and a GenToo laptop for work related activities. Uhhh, notice ... NO "incumbent" computer but she has an Intel MacOSX and can boot XP IF needed as well as having access to one of those at school. Office Suites: MS Office, OpenOffice.org, and NeoOffice ... she does just fine with all! And, from what she tells me, she chooses the Office Suite to use according to the job at hand. I didn't ask her to elaborate for she had things figured out for herself. My niece a typical student? Maybe not. One doesn't have to be a mathematician nor engineer to make digital consumer decisions - they just need information and exposure. Now the other story ... When still employed at an ESC (site for AP testing) got an emergency phone call one weekend from the persons administering the AP test for Computer Apps. These persons were very upset that students who showed to take the test could not. Reason given: Publisher was not installed on the computers in the lab being used. Months previous to the phone call, our "technician" and myself installed Publisher on every computer in that lab upon direction of No. 2 at the ESC who shared a letter sent to every Superintendent in the Region promising (dictating) that Publisher would be on every computer. When I arrived at the ESC I saw one female student outside the lab. When I entered the lab I saw one student at a computer ... a male (notice the monitors were no where in view!). I asked the young man if he was having problems taking the test to which he responded "No" and chuckled. I then asked if he was using Publisher and again he said "No" and chuckled even louder and more! I pardoned myself for disturbing him, then went to all the computers the monitors had turned on. Exploring the menuing system, I see, yes, it was indeed true that Publisher was no where to be found in the menu, however, the MS Office Suite was: Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Access. So what was the problem? There wasn't really a problem ... if one were taught concepts rather than process! The young man had concepts and troubleshooting skills. The young lady did not ... NOR did the persons monitoring the test! When I finally found those persons who were supposed to be monitoring (took 15 minutes and I walked over every hall way of the building) to inform them that students could take the test, both just flat didn't believe me. So we walked back to the lab and I showed them on a few computers that Office was installed. One of the monitors walks to three other computers to see if those had MS Office - looking for a way out? It was then determined that too much time had passed for the young lady to begin taking the test (monitors had to leave promptly at 12:00 noon and could not stay any longer for the young lady to finish). The parent of the young lady was upset and vowed to complain to her ISD. Understandable, considering they came from out of town. And, as is typical in a situation like this, Monday afternoon, I'm in the office of my immediate supervisor explaining what had transpired - which, started out like a cross examination of a hostile defense witness and ended with a promise to investigate those that were monitoring AND a "review of the ISO process" for administering AP test at the ESC. (YUK! - glad I wasn't included in editing the ISO related to that!). BTW, NO apologies for the accusations of incompetence were ever forth coming from ESC administration, the parent, from the ISD, from .... anyone ... such is the life of "technical person"! Considering that persons now graduating from public schools might/will have up to 10 or so different careers in their life time, the best approach in education would appear to be one of a variety of experiences and exposure. That, folks, includes technology, tech apps (yes, even Office Suites), and usage. For who knows! Some of your students might land a job with the Navy (DoD) http://www.fcw.com/online/news/151858-1.html or NASA: http://www.fcw.com/print/13_11/news/98241-1.html In closing this, some "positive" food for thought/investigation/research: Top 10 ... Open Source Resources CIO's Should Know: http://www.ciozone.com/index.php/Tools/50-Top-Open-Source-Resources-CIOs-Should-Know-And-Maybe-Love.html Applications: SugarCRM, OpenOffice.org Content Managment Systems: MediaWiki, Twiki, Socialtext, Drupal, Xoops, Exponent, Joomla Web Servers/Services: Apache Axis, Apache Struts, Apache Geronimo, Apache Tomcat, JBoss, PHP, Ruby and Ruby on Rails, PHPList Networking: Rdesktop, Samba, Asterisk, Zabbrix, iFolder Strange names, huh? Google 'em for more info! BTW, the ciozone server itself is running Joomla and Apache/2.2.6 (Fedora) Server Best Open Source Project? See the voting of what others think ... http://www.grupthink.com/topic/821 One item listed: Freedom Toaster (I've mentioned this before, BTW) Public CD burner, where you can burn CDs with free content (software, music, books and so on). Only available in South Africa for the moment. http://www.freedomtoaster.org/?q=home Some of you noticed "only available in South Africa" ... but wait, here's how to build one: http://www.freedomtoaster.org/Build The FreedomToaster site runs Drupal, BTW. and, behind it is the Shuttleworth Foundation ... of Ubuntu fame! In closing, this quote (with which I've taken some ["liberties"] ): "give a man [woman] a fish, he [she] eats for a day. teach a man [woman] to fish, and you've lost a consulting [teaching] job" - erik roth -
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