[nzlug] OSS in Nz schools

[Peter Harrison]

On Wed, 2007-02-07 at 12:44 +1300, Daniel Lawson wrote:

> There is also massive resistance to using tools like openoffice. I
> didn't really follow the original thread covering this, but speaking
> from experience teachers - and fundamentally anyone who has trained on
> one piece of software and sees a computer only as a tool, not as an
> interest - don't care enough to change, especially when what they are
> used to /is being provided by the Ministry of Education at no effective
> cost to them/

Just to reiterate and illuminate what we are talking about, here is an
email from the education IT list:


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Hi John,
I know that the Ministry of Education is cautioning schools not to go
rushing into things as far as Vista is concerned. Doug Harré recommended
a brilliant interim report that Becta has published for schools,
comprehensively reporting on the potential impact for and on schools
(UK). Some of the points they make are: 
*Windows XP took almost 3 years before the really stable version (with
SP2) arrived...hardly wise to dive into the first version of anything
without good reason. 
*Many useful features of Vista are not in widespread use in education 
*27% of the features are able to be downloaded without buying into it
(IE7, Windows Media Player)
"there were no 'must have' features in Vista. They also advised that
about 60% of the new functionality was either 'should have' or 'could
have' (rather than 'must have'). The remaining 40% of the new features
were assessed as either 'wait' or of no discernible value".
As for Office 2007 - one of the things they were concerned about was the
interoperability: "in relation to interoperability between Office 2007
and competitor products (such as StarOffice or OpenOffice), all tests
failed as none of these alternatives supported the new Office 2007 file
formats. Additionally Microsoft's current adoption of the OpenDocument
Format (ODF) format is limited"

Becta recommends waiting until their final report (due at Bett 2008)
before making any decisions, in the meantime they will be taking their
concerns to Microsoft. 

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I read this way wrong first time through. Basically they are thinking
that because of interoperability issues with OO Microsoft Office 2007
might not be adopted. Cool :)