ubuntu-users Digest, Vol 24, Issue 154

[Alain Muls]

On Wednesday 23 August 2006 16:26, you wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-08-23 at 14:14 +0200, Alain Muls wrote:
> > > But it's a constant uphill battle. The schools are, more and more,
> > > locked into long-term, overpriced contracts to offer rented Windows
> > > computers. None of the universities that my eldest daughter
> > > investigated even offered Macs, and she's looking at *art* schools.
> > > Geezum. It's enough to drive you to despair.
> >
> > I totally agree with this opinion. It is a drill they need to reproduce
> > without thinking.
>
> It's the same way in my course room too :-) (I deliver Red Hat
> training).
>
> There's nothing wrong with rote drilling, especially with something like
> which menu is the whatsitsname function on, s long as gthey grasp what a
> menu is to begin with. I even go so far as to drill students on typical
> installation/configuration - I want them to know httpd.conf the same way
> their left foot knows the clutch. Again, it's understood that they do
> comprehend what apache is all about - this step is often left out at
> school
>
> > And it is not unlike Alan replied in another message that
> > my eldest cannot use OpenOffice, he does btw since he has dutch spelling
> > and a dutch interface there, while Word/Excel is English and I do not
> > have the spelling dictionaries.
>
> As it turns out I didn't fully grasp the situation you were describing
> as to why your kids need to use Office. I thought they needed to submit
> papers and homework and Office would be just another word processor.
> Instead they are attending an MS Office 101 class...
>
> > I hope it will change since Belgium recently adopted the open document
> > format, but I am afraid that there will be NO change in the educational
> > system.
> >
> > The teachres do not want to investigate in OpenOffice even if they get
> > the opportunity to distribute the exact same version, whatever OS, to ALL
> > their students. How is this in other countries?
>
> It's no different in South Africa, we were discussing this last week on
> the Open ICDL list - teachers are very resistant to changing to Open
> Source apps. It's not that they are anti-OSS, it's more that they don't
> want to change from the status quo. Frankly, they couldn't give a rat's
> ass about the philosophy and politics of closed vs open source, they
> have 30 or more kids to get through a program and a year to do it in. SO
> asking them to change the IT platform is somewhat like someone
> arbitrarily trying to get you to agree to move house to an equally
> perfectly good one two blocks over, all for no benefit to you that you
> can see. You'd resist it, same as the teachers are doing.

They do not have to change the platform (Windows -> Linux) but they could 
(quite easily) change from Word/Excel to swriter/scalc and ALL kids could 
have the same program in their native language whatever plaform they are on.


>
> For the record, I'm an OSS zealot myself (one of the worst...) but I do
> see the teachers point of view and understand why they say what they
> say, even if I don;t agree with them
>
> alan

-- 

mvg/Alain

________________________________________________________
Alain Muls                                               Tel +32.2.7426340
Royal Military Academy                          Fax +32.2.7426472
Dep CISS-ASGE                                 alain.muls at telenet.be
________________________________________________________