[ubuntu-uk] Help get Windows out of schools

[David King]

I signed the petition as well.

I am thinking that the schools'/education system's thinking is a bit out 
of date. Why teach the children just one OS when there are many choices 
now in the real world? Not all companies use the same OS. Some use 
Windows XP, some use Windows Vista, and on servers they have Windows 
Server. And sometimes even earlier versions of Windows. Plus some use 
Mac OS X or earlier Mac OS versions. And some use Linux, including in 
many places on servers. So limiting children's education to just one OS 
will leave them greatly disadvantaged when they reach the real world. 
Especially as whatever system they are taught in their early school 
years may well be completely obsolete by the time they become adults.

If I had children, I would encourage them to experiment with different 
operating systems and tell them that they need to learn a variety in 
order to be better prepared for the future. Just as it is worthwhile for 
children to learn more than one language, although the way languages are 
taught is probably really nowhere near good enough. I learnt French and 
German at school but cannot fluently use either. In computing, I learnt 
the BBC Micro, with its card reader. I wrote programs in BASIC and 
transferred those to filling in boxes for each character on special 
cards which went into the card reader to feed the program into the 
computer. By the time I left school and went to university such systems 
were obsolete and I used a PC with DOS. Now DOS is obsolete, and so on.

It is far better to teach the children the fundamentals of computing, 
and how to use any computer system regardless of which interface is 
used, so that in the future, when it is all different, they will still 
be able to use a computer.


David King


Paul Sutton wrote:
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> Aparently primnary schools are forced to use MS office so the children
> are ready for what is used in Secondary schools which is I guess a fair
> argument i guess.  And i guess secondaries feel obliged to use MS office
> as they see it as "industry standard."
>
> However looking at what happen at the exwick community centre where they
> children/ Young people and adults there seemed to have little problem
> finding their way around ubuntu (which looks a lot different to
> windows),  it proves that the children would have no problems going from
> say open office to Ms office in the secondary school,  ( I am only going
> from what has been said in the e-mails since)
>
> I am not an expert, but it seems no matter what justification people try
> and use for using Windows, there is a way round it,  Kids / young people
> can simply adapt,  I am 33 and having used KDE for years,  installed
> ubuntu (using gnome) had no problem with it,  ok it take a while to find
> what I need, but I have 3 menus, applications, places, adn system, so
> its pretty obvious what each one is for,
>
> When we have more write ups, we should have more observations and
> evidence to back the above up,
>
> Paul
>
>
> David King wrote:
>   
>> The other way to get windows out of schools is to remove the glass and 
>> replace with bricks  :-)
>>
>> David King
>>
>>
>> Vinothan Shankar wrote:
>>     
>>> I've created a petition to the Prime Minister to make the primary OS in
>>> schools free and open source - it can be found at
>>> http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nonMSschools.  To anyone that points
>>> out I should have suggested Ubuntu for Education, the first submission
>>> did, but was rejected on the grounds that it was "promoting commercial
>>> products or services".  The petition should probably also have pointed
>>> out that schools could keep the same hardware, but petitions there are
>>> restricted to 1000 characters including spaces.
>>>
>>> Please sign.
>>>   
>>>       
>
>
> - --
> Paul Sutton
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