[ubuntu-za] cat using OOo

[Hilton Theunissen]

from a cat educator

  " I am not sure which examining body your school uses, but I would 
check out your examinations very carefully before making that type of 
switch. Most of the exercises I have seen are very product and version 
specific. Often screen shots are required that would be very difficult 
to provide with even a different version of MS Office. CAT has painted 
itself into a very MS Office 2003 looking corner and it is almost 
impossible to do the exam questions with anything else.
The biggest obstacle is MS Access questions. The main topic of the 
questions that I have seen is the interface. Questions are asked about 
the MS Access 2003 interface that would make no sense at all if you used 
an interface like phpMyAdmin to look at a MySQL database. (Input 
masks?????) Design a form ...
As long as the CAT course is about the interface and not the concepts of 
spreadsheet or database design you will have to stick with MS Office 
2003. Why, even the practical exam requires WordArt - just ry the 
exemplars in OpenOffice 2.3 before you start weaning your kids off MS 
Office 2003.
I have OpenOffice MS Office 2003 and MS Office 2007 installed on all my 
lab machines - the kids can use any one they choose  - except in CAT 
class. We have to stick to Office 2003 because the exam questions are 
based on this particular interface and I can't afford to disadvantage my 
kids by teaching them anything (better?) else. They would much prefer to 
use Office 2007 - simpler navigation of menus (esp if you don't know the 
old ones), many of the old (complicated) functions removed - but we have 
to stick to 2003... "
-- 
Kind regards.

Hilton Theunissen
Inkululeko Technologies
Tel: +27 11 462 9124
Fax-to-mail: 0865033491
Mobile: +27 72 900800 1
E-mail: hilton at inkululeko.co.za
http://www.tuxlab.org.za