<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;"></meta></head><style type="text/css">.Normal { text-align: left; text-indent:0pt; margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt; }</style><body>Hi everyone, I just joined the list and this is probably a good topic to introduce myself. I'm an IT manager at a secondary grammar school, I use Ubuntu at work for a DHCP/NTP/Proxy/Filter server and at home for other activities. Our Desktops at school are XP Pro, they have various bits of Open source software such as Firefox, Audacity, The Gimp, OO, 7zip & NVU. OO is offered as an alternative to MS Office, it sees about 2% usage from students that have it at home. Our IT teachers will not touch it as it involves rewriting worksheets for students which have all been based on MS Office. However whilst Writer and Spreadsheet does'nt cause problems, the database package does. With the other initiatives that teachers have to keep on top of and lack of extra preparation time rewriting of all the resources is impossible. If resources or books were available then this would help greatly. On the teach-ict resources website (www.teach-ict.com/) there are no Open Office materials, which is a shame as the idea in school is to teach transferrable skills and at the moment with the database program it is unclear how to use it. There does'nt seem books on Open Office either, on Amazon there is only OO for dummies. Our school cannot afford to dump all the training materials and money invested in resources that are geared up to MS Office and of course the money invested in the licences. The same goes for the DIDA course where Dreamweaver is used instead of say NVU. I fully suport Open Source values, and I really believe that our students should have the opportunity to try out alternative OS's and use Open source software but without the resources it's a no go area, if many resources become available then I'm sure it will fly. Merry xmas to all Jonathan Lees -----Original Message----- From: ubuntu-uk-bounces@lists.ubuntu.com on behalf of Toby Smithe Sent: Sat 12/23/2006 10:36 PM To: British Ubuntu Talk Subject: Re: [ubuntu-uk] EDM179 On Sat, 2006-12-23 at 22:20 +0000, Ashley Hooper wrote: > Found this on LinuxToday, today: > > http://www.computeractive.co.uk/computeractive/news/2171542/education-driving-force-behind > > The article starts off sounding very positive but the conclusion leaves a bit > of room for doubt. I don't think so. That's just what the organisations say. Again, the Becta response is identical to that which the Government MPs are sending out. -- Help me get to Venezuela! http://tibsplace.co.uk/venezuela -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/ <HR style="HEIGHT: 1px"> This e-mail and any attachments are intended only for the recipients listed. If it has come to you in error please delete it and let us know. This message and its attachments have been scanned for viruses but we cannot guarantee them to be virus free.</body></html>