<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> <title></title> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> Christophe Vandeplas schreef: <blockquote cite="mid:47CC330B.7060801@vandeplas.com" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">Jan Claeys wrote: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">Op zondag 02-03-2008 om 23:13 uur [tijdzone +0100], schreef Cedric Janssens: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">SOmething a little bit hard... When a teacher in a school tell to his pupils to launch the computer with a big Windows logo during the boot sequence. When the title of the course is learning MSWord... Isn't it a infraction to the article 41 of the "pacte scolaire" of 1959 ? <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.educationsante.be/es/article.php?id=942">http://www.educationsante.be/es/article.php?id=942</a> </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap="">Good point, but what if they use a course title of "word processing" instead, and still teach the same MS Word-myopic course? </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> That is indeed the right 'solution'. Teachers shouldn't teach a specific application (except with very very specific stuff of course), but they should teach the principles. Check these documents (dutch) if you have some time <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://documentation.vandeplas.com/vrijesofttegroept.pdf"><http://documentation.vandeplas.com/vrijesofttegroept.pdf></a> <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://documentation.vandeplas.com/vrijesofttegroept.presentatie.pdf"><http://documentation.vandeplas.com/vrijesofttegroept.presentatie.pdf></a> </pre> </blockquote> Glad to see that you're talking about things I use in practice, eg. talking about 'a presentation' instead of 'Powerpoint' :-). I also teach 'computersystems' to pupils in a secondary school (Sint-Amandscollege Kortrijk-Harelbeke). They need to learn how to setup and maintain an operating system and we've got a dual boot so they can see that a lot of stuff behaves the same in Linux or Windows. Still most of the exercises are in Windows though. <blockquote cite="mid:47CC330B.7060801@vandeplas.com" type="cite"> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">I think teaching the teachers is te most important thing now... </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> Correct; But also the most difficult part... </pre> </blockquote> And if you've got a teacher who want to try out something different than the mainstream, then you've got another difficult part: a very good 'out-of-the-box' book/course/tutorial that can be used in a class situation. Interesting in this case is that KATHO-Tielt uses OpenOffice.org for those who are learning for kindergarten teacher or primary school teacher. See <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://ict.kathotielt.be/writer">http://ict.kathotielt.be/writer</a> Another thing that we - teachers - are missing is 'expertise' and 'time'. Eg. we have some rather old computers that are too slow to run Windows XP smoothly. Xubuntu would fit in nicely here and although I have the expertise to install it on those pc's, I do not have that expertise and time to install ánd maintain it in a network environment (centralized logon, centralized file server,...). But of course, the most important part in education is talking about 'competences' and 'principles', rather than specific applications... Greetings Mattias </body> </html>