I am a governor at a lower school, and I also work in IT, so I am aware of the savings that can be made by using open source software.
I have suggested several times that the school could save money by using the free OpenOffice package instead of purchasing licenses for Microsoft Office 2003, but the schools view is that children would eventually have to learn MS Office anyway when they leave school, so there is little point in making them use an alternative package.
To be fair, I don't think they are spending much on the MS Office licenses - the cost of the hardware is far more significant. However, I would still be interested in how other schools justify OpenSource when there is resistance like this.
Thanks,
Ed.
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Training on an office suite, be it OpenOffice.org, MS Office 2003, 2007 or 2010, isn't really what ICT education is for. If your pupils leave you as confident, independent and creative users of technology, then they'll quickly be able to learn the dull practicalities of whatever will have replaced MS Office by that point (something more likely to be cloud based and thus more akin to Google Apps than Office 2003, or even OO.o, IMHO).
For your pupils to become such confident, independent and creative users of tech, exposure to, experience of, and reflection on as many applications, operating systems and hardware platforms seems the sensible way to proceed.
Ofsted's report, The Importance of ICT, ought to be on the reading list for your head teacher, network manager and ICT Coordinator. They put the argument rather well:
"Overreliance on a standard ‘office’ application and operating system restricted [pupils'] opportunities to develop generic and transferable skills" (p5)
Leaving aside the whole question of whether office applications is what students should be being taught ... (I think that everyone should learn at least some basic programming).
It is meaningless to argue about whether students should learn MS office 2003/2007/2010 or OpenOffice 3.x today. They will probalby only be hitting the workplace in about 5 years time, when all the details of these applications will have changed far more than the current differences between OO and MS office.
The important things to learn are the fundamental issues like consistent use of styles and structuring documents. The issues of embedding images, and so on. Of course, to learn these things (and be able to do homework) the student needs to acutally use an office application, but from a pedagogic perspective, it does not matter which.
From a practical perspective, there is a lot in favour of OpenOffice. Basically, no licensing issues for students using it at home to do their homework.
And from a philosophical point of view, open source is better.
It is not the role of an education system, particularly a publicly funded one, to provide low grade skills training in specifically branded products. Young people should be aware of the properties and possibilities of a word processor and know how to use it appropriately. That's called education, when you equip people to understand what they can achieve and empower them to do it. Training them to use specific products to suit the interests of the purveyors of those products is not the same thing at all.
That elementary distinction between low grade job specific skills and an education based in some kind of understanding has often been deliberately blurred, so it is hardly surprising that the school should fail to see the difference. We have now moved into a world in which lesson by lesson, theme by theme, the school and teachers are expected to justify all their activities in terms of the market tradeable skills the learners will acquire in the process. How one arrives at a cash value (as William James might have put it in a rather different context) of an understanding of the kinetic theory of gases to the grateful shelf stacker in B&Q strikes me as a very interesting question, especially when a distinction is drawn between a rich understanding, a middling understanding and an inferior, might as well have missed that module, understanding of the theory.
I took business and accounting studies at both school and College. Not once did I encounter the Sage accounting software whilst learning. We just used spreadsheets (notice I did not say "Excel", thats because I was taught to be independant). Im guessing that if your school also teaches business studies, they would not have invested in Sage licenses for the pupil machines to give them experience in it?
So why feel the need to provide Microsoft Office? Sage seems to be the most common accounting package that business and accounting students will encounter but no reliance is imposed upon it in the teaching.
You could look at it the same for all subjects.
I am a qualified teacher and have worked in Colleges teaching ICT and Computing. If there is one skill/tool I feel more emphasis should be put upon, it is simply the ability to research effectively. As adults we jump on the "oh these kids know pick it up so fast nowadays" bandwagon, unfortunately, they also pick up the bad habits too. Teach a child to use a search engine EFFECTIVELY and they will be set for any career.
Hi!
@esyrett
Well... first justification is always cost. Though as you note, this isn't always significant. Microsoft has been known to make deals for education that are close to cost = zero... and in most open source competitive situations, while the licensing costs of the open source software may be less (since it's zero) than that of commercial / proprietary software, the total cost can be similar if you include support contract, training and integration.
In the edu world, support for open office varies. In higher education, students have been known to take part in the school IT administration, but in K-9, this isn't feasible. You will need to be supported in your use of the product. Compare support costs for Open Office and Microsoft office. When it comes to Open Office, you have 2 options. The completely free OpenOffice.org which you can download for free, or "Oracle Open Office" which you can buy from Oracle (with whatever discount Education markets get in the UK). The Oracle purchase comes with support for the first year, and a few additional bundled plugins (which you can always get for free for OpenOffice.org - but with Oracle Open Office, they are included in the supported perimeter). You can then purchase separate support (for OpenOffice.org any time, for Oracle Open Office from the 2nd year onwards). Also note that with Open Office, there are no upgrade costs when you move from version 3 to version 4... With Microsoft Office, upgrading from 2003 to 2007 is not free.
The second argument is openness. When your students produce documents with Open Office (from now on , I will refer to this as OO and it means interchangeably OpenOffice.org or Oracle Open Office, since, inside, they are THE SAME PRODUCT with the same functionality) are in a fully recognized open standard called ISO 23600. This standard specifies the OpenDocumentFormat to which OO adheres. Microsoft's newer office suites have OOXML, which is also standardized, but none of the Microsoft Office products actually fully adhere to OOXML standard. So you can't really say that the documents ARE standard with Microsoft... they are just close... but no cigar.
Why is standards important? Well, in 20 years, when one of your students becomes a famous author, and your school administration searches through the archived documents, for prose that that student wrote when she was a student in your school, if it is in a proprietary format, it will likely be impossible to read (nobody can read SuperCalc documents these days, it ran on 1980s TRS-80 machines, and the format is proprietary and was never made public - should one try to reverse-engineer it today, lawyers would have a field day sueing). If the document is in ODF, even if OpenOffice doesn't exist as such anymore, the ISO 23600 document format specification will let somebody implement without risk of legal action a program to access that document. The open standard is a guaranty of longevity of your documents. (Which doesn't prevent you from also implementing a proper document ARCHIVING system, right?)
The next aspect is that OpenOffice is being more and more used in administrations, in the UK (read this article form Open Source Observatory) but everywhere in Europe. So in effect, you are training your students to be ready for the European Union's IT context when they grow up. You are preparing their future.
Finally, with MS, when you pay a license to use it (whether YOUR school pays, or the UK government) it's money that goes directly to a US company (Microsoft). When you use OpenOffice, there is no license money that goes to Oracle... and if you PAY for Oracle Open Office, you pay for support, which means UK people working to deliver that support, so you contribute to generating wealth in your country by having local people work.
So... I hope this helps.
Caveat : I work for Oracle - comming from the Sun acquisition. I am certainly biased. But with Open Office, you have the choice of buying it from Oracle (which my management would prefer) or getting it for free and just using it (which I have certainly no objection to and you can get the same level of support from Oracle on that).
The other justification is:
Are you going to pay for Microsoft Office licenses for your students to use at home as well? How are you expecting them to pay for it to do their homework? What about students from disadvantaged backgrounds? Is it fair if you only pay for licenses for those and not everybody?
Give OOo to all your students and you've opened the door for more students.
Not to mention the cross-curricular teaching and learning opportunities around collaborative projects, how it was made (ICT), who has contributed and which countries they represent (Geography), just to mention two.
Simon,
I find that reason ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC! Darn why didn't I think of it before.
Be sure I'll use it many times later on.
Definitely. Teachers / schools should have their students require purchasing software to do their work if they can do it for free. Close the digital divide a bit more!
Thanks!
Gilles.
Which reminds of the old, should have worked but the wrong people were in charge, argument that plays to the heart of government:
sustainability and inclusion
Important words in government, particularly education; maybe times are hard enough that people will actually listen?
Anyway use OpenOffice (and other open source applications) because it is more sustainable; that is you pay once for the migration, from thereon it's free. Actually from thereon there's a tendency to reduce costs, because it reduces costs of additional computing provision andfrees up your platform choices for future migrations.
Which brings me to inclusive; not only inclusive because it is the lowest cost option for home use by virtue of its free to use, free to redistribute nature, and therefore the most inclusive from a socioeconomic perspective, but it is also available in more languages, particularly minority ones, so more inclusive from a first language perspective. And of course it is the most inclusive because it runs on multiple platforms - Linux at home, no problem, Mac, no problem. Even Windows.
In fact you can turn it round. How do you justify using MS Office? Public sector policy is to get best value AND not discriminate. If you need it for the mainstream curriculum the school legally has an obligation to pay, eg if they expect learners to use the application for homework. If other schools can satisfy statutory requirements using OOo (Or Google docs for the matter) why can't you? What are your plans for transition?
Finally there are reasons to use collaborative technologies in any case. Increasingly it is what children will need to use when they leave school. The argument that they will have to use MS Office is anti-education and not as certain as they think. We had a recent job spec advertised for undergraduates in Computing and ICT. Candidates came back with lists of competence in X,Y and Z proprietary apps none of which we use. None said I am confident to quickly pick up whatever technologies you use. That simple sentence could have triggered an interview. I would expect a computer science undergraduate to be confident to use a basic office suite. They don't have to list every bit of MS Office as if it were some sort of achievement to be able to use a WP and Powerpoint.
Useful thread everyone, thanks!
My only computer experience at school was BBC Micro, with no IT teachers. I was lucky to have one at home too. I was the preverbial drop out @ school, left with nothing but a passion for computers (principally because there was no one to tell me I would be no good at it).
It didnt have an office suite,
It didn't have hi resolution graphics.
It didn't have a gui interface or a mouse.
Just a ">" prompt
The best experience a kid could get. No nintendo wii to distract me... If I wanted to play games I had to invent them first..... I leant comand structure, design skills, to type properly, to think independently, to discover and learn and have fun.
Now I use:
A Windows desktop at work (Because I have to)
A GNU/Linux desktop at home (because I like too)
I spend my working day administering Linux / Unix boxes from the command line,
writing reports in open office
planning team work through email
getting system and application alerts through IM
researching solutions on the web
My point?
From the perspective of now my BBC was a dinosaur ... And I admit there were times when it would not do what I (thought) I had told it to do and wanted to throw it out of the window (if you pardon the pun) .....
But from the experience point of view it trained me to be resourceful, to find better ways, to be indipendent from one single piece of technology (hardware or software) and to learn how to cope with new technology.
It should never be about what hardware or software you use.... it should always be about how you inspire people to gain the maximum experience from what they have in front of them, if the tools cost next to nothing and cover the important open standards then all the better. Of course open source usually has the other advantage that the student can take it home and use it on their computer at home.
Ah the nostalgia. I learnt to program using Algol W at Uni and hated it - I didn't have the patience to wait 24 hrs to get a print out with syntax error at line 5! I bought a BBC B because I thought I was a dinosaur and needed to get up to speed. BBC BASIC was easy after ALGOL then I taught myself 6502 Assembler then 6802 then ARM. I was quite surprised to find this was unusual. I thought most science/maths teachers would be doing it. If I had the time and need I'm pretty sure I could teach myself just about any programming stuff if the information is available. That is really why Open Source should synonymous with education. It's all part of a culture of learning by doing.
While on the subject of OOo, I'm planning to accredit an OOo version of the ITQ in November that will become the official certification for the project word wide. Not sure yet if it will get pre-16 approval and hence league table points. Would there be demand?