Subject: RE: Fwd: Distributing OpenOffice to schools
From: William F. Fulton (fulton@gci.net)
Date: Wed Aug 13 2003 - 15:08:24 AKDT
Well conceived rebuttal I agree with you that schools should be doing
more than just teaching for the job market but alas they pretty much
are. As for the switch from apple to IBM compatibles that illustrates my
point the schools refused to switch until pressures from the market made
it impossible for them to continue ignoring the fact that the majority
had begun using PC's.
I am in no way arguing that schools should be wasting there money on M$
crap I'm just saying that the initiative would be better served by
getting Linux and other open source products on the desktops of
businesses then and only then will it force the behemoth that is our
public education system to turn around and take a look at us.
William F. Fulton
Northern Lights Automation
-----Original Message-----
From: aklug-bounce@aklug.org [mailto:aklug-bounce@aklug.org] On Behalf
Of bryan@ak.net
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2003 2:46 PM
To: aklug@aklug.org
Subject: Re: Fwd: Distributing OpenOffice to schools
On Wed, Aug 13, 2003 at 02:24:21PM -0800, William F. Fulton
<fulton@gci.net> wrote:
>
> Another way to look at it is this
>
> Schools are there to teach individuals to exist in the job market at
> this time a large majority of businesses continue to pay for and use
M$
> Office until we can integrate open source applications into the
majority
> of businesses it would be foolish for public institutions to use any
> other product. The problem isn't the IT departments of the schools
> mentality it is the various corporations' insistence on using M$
> products. Until we change corporate and government buying practices
> there is no hope for Open Source anything to have more than a back
seat
> role in education.
I see your point, but I don't entirely agree. Education is a lot
more than just job training. As an example, Pascal is used (and in
fact designed) for teaching programming skills. It's rarely used
in the job market, but once a person learns how to program, moving
to another language is not so hard. The general skills and thought
processes are what the education is about.
As another example, Apple II series computers were used forever in
schools, even into the 90s, when IBM PCs and compatibles were the
norm in business. Once you know how computers work, moving to a
new platform is no big deal. It's the same with productivity
software. Once you know how to use office programs effectively,
how much effort does would it take to move from OpenOffice to MS
Office?
Besides, the open source movement is making rapid progress. By the
time today's freshmen graduate, Linux and OpenOffice may be, if not
as popular as MS products, at least widely used alternatives. Would
it have made sense to avoid teaching students about this new Windows
thing that's catching on while most businesses were still using DOS?
-- Bryan Medsker bryan@ak.net--------- To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org> with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.
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