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Britain Advises Against Vista, Office 2007 for Schools
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Jan 11, 2008 07:34 PM
from the benefits-unclear dept.
from the benefits-unclear dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The British government's educational IT authority has issued a report advising schools in the country not to upgrade their classroom or office systems to Windows Vista or Office 2007. According to this InformationWeek story, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency says costs for Vista and Office 2007 'are significant and the benefits remain unclear.' Instead, Becta is advising British schools to take a long look at Linux and open source suites like OpenOffice.org."
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Firehose:Brits Expel Vista, Office 2007 From Schools by Anonymous Coward
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Well Done chaps (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Well Done chaps (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well Done chaps (Score:4, Informative)
Yep [bbc.co.uk]
Not that surprising (Score:5, Informative)
As it is they have windows server, Exchange, MSoffice, Dreamweaver (after a successful revolt against frontpage), and VB.
I've started teaching my kid myself....
Re:Not that surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
To cut a long story short, the school now has a custom-built server running Linux (CentOS 5) with RAID 1 mirrored drives in trayless caddies AND a spare 'cold swap' chassis that the school computer technician can use if the main server dies (which can then be repaired at leisure). Total cost was around £500
So there is hope.
Re:Not that surprising (Score:4, Informative)
All parts are branded and there is a spare chassis for the IT technician to use while parts are exchanged under warranty - something they are fully capable of doing. *You* may need a third party to replace a dead PSU, but this school doesn't - in fact, with their kit they can be up and running in a matter of minutes rather than waiting for an 8-hour call out service.
Sure, if you do not have the skills in house you may need third party support - this school has in house resources.
"A quote for £000's is money spent on peace of mind". Eh? Not if it's inappropriate - or do *you* say 'yes' to every quote you receive without weighing up the options.
You do not have all the fact so are in no position to make specific judgements. Maybe you work for a maintenance company?
Re:Not that surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Like the other AC poster, you are commenting from a position of ignorance.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Per
Education != Training (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was at school in the seventies, the bright kids got an education. The less bright girls learnt to type, because there would always be work for copy typists, and the less bright boys learnt to use a lathe, because here in Birmingham (England, not Alabama) there would always be work in the car industry.
I wonder how that's working out? I was taught transferrable skills, like how to learn, and thirty years later I'm still learning. Meanwhile, there's no car industry and copy typing, shorthand and the rest may as well be candle making for all the traction they have.
I don't know what software my children will use in the workplace in ten or twenty years' time, and if I did I'd be making a fortune producing it. I don't know what JOBS they'll be doing in ten or twenty years time, perhaps (indeed probably) in a very different landscape to where we are now. What I do know is that flexibility, adaptability, the ability to learn and reskill and change, are going to be vital in a world where the linear career is dead. And that's why the best thing you can learn is how to learn.
So as a matter of policy, whatever software the kids are using at school, we use something else at home. School right now is Office 2003 on XP, so home is iWork '08 on Mac. Spreadsheet problems I show them how to do by hand, and I'm about to start showing them how to knock up code to do it (and I'm choosing a language they're highly unlikely to use in school: I'm torn between Scheme and Processing). We did a poster project with Keynote, but also with a razor blade and cowgum.
You can teach your children ``the workplace'' if you like. I think you Americans call those sorts of lessons ``shop''. Someone who has a good degree in a pure science or a legitimate humanity can learn to use Word to a sufficient standard in a morning. Someone who knows Word, but can't use a library or do calculus, is welcome to try learning those in a morning. How many successful authors can touch type, and how many just did hunt and peck? Same principle.
How did Brunel build the Great Western without the help of Office? Which was more important: using Office, or being a great engineer?
And before anyone makes the point, I realise these aren't binary, black/white choices. But in terms of mentality, they are: do you regard education as about learning the direct skills of today, or the ability to learn the skills of tomorrow? There's a word for people with the first sort of education, or indeed training, and the word is `poor'.
ian
Ministry of the Obvious? (Score:5, Funny)
-jcr
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft's response, "How do you know it'll hurt until you've tried it"?
Re:Ministry of the Obvious? (Score:5, Funny)
This so-called DDoS (Deeper Destruction of Sclera) attack can be prevented by installing Stick Service Pack 1, which adds an outer layer of additional protection to the stick thus preventing third parties from snapping the stick and re-assembling it to include their extension.
A tool is available to check your stick to see whether it has been affected by a malicious attack. The tool detects stick size changes - ask your stationery supplier for the '30cm ruler' tool.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Is OpenOffice.org really any better? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it would be better to teach these children how to use LaTeX. It offers the openness of OO.o, but allows for the preparation of much more professional documentation. It would also be very useful for those students who wish to pursue university studies, as most math, science and engineering papers are formatted using LaTeX.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is OpenOffice.org really any better? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the biggest disconnect with MS Word is what it's capable of compared to what it's good at. I constantly see people trying to make MS Word do things it doesn't do particularly well and getting frustrated in the process.
Credit where it's due: MS Word is a good word processing engine. You can type things, check your spelling (it's often right), check your grammar (it's often wrong), and print. These are good things that MS Word does well, as long as your document isn't too long.
MS Word is capable of tracking changes in a document so you can know who made what edits and when. This does not make it a document versioning system, yet that is often how I see it used. It's a nice feature for a writer or a small workgroup but entirely ineffective for a larger group or over a longer time. And it will bite you hard if you send documents externally in native MS Office formats without killing all the evidence of previous edits.
MS Word is capable of generating tables and embedding graphics or spreadsheet objects. It's just not very good at it. Between different users on different systems (or the same user on the same system) it seems to have its own mind about how things should be displayed. Anything embedded can change on a whim, and will change provided you open the document often enough. Which feeds right into the next point.
MS Word is capable of doing document layout. But it's a complete nightmare. Lines disappear and reappear; text boxes change size and shape for no apparent reason; fonts randomly switch from 10-pt sans to 12-pt serif because they feel like it; auto-numbering decides it knows better than you what numbers go where; and objects resize and replace themselves entirely according to their own rules (which are confidential and proprietary).
MS Word knows better than you what you want to do with it, and if you want to something else, well, you're obviously mistaken. It really makes me miss the days of WordPerfect 5. I appreciated and made good use of the fact that I could see the codes embedded in the text, could tell from the codes when something would be bold or italic and not have to worry about text randomly changing format later
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Borrowing" vs "Ripping off" (Score:3, Insightful)
In Microsoft's case, they rip off. They don't really even improve. They have built a (very successful) business around stealing
Re:Is OpenOffice.org really any better? (Score:4, Interesting)
Office isn't very good, and for OOo to do *worse* than it is a pretty miserable achievement. We need to get some fresh faces involved with the project to either clean things up (a la Firefox), or start from scratch to build an application that's got an overall "friendlier" appearance.
"Lack of features" isn't even the biggest issue here. Despite being much "simpler", I find AbiWord to be vastly superior to OOo, even though its featureset is comparatively limited.
The GIMP has been stumbling along for years upon years, and has never really managed to reach a state of usefulness to designers. However, in a very short period of time, two guys wrote an f---ing amazing shareware "Photoshop substitute [pixelmator.com]" for Mac OS. Granted, it's not photoshop, but unlike The GIMP, or OOo, it's fast, has a good UI, and even though it lacks some of Photoshop's more advanced features, it's more than adequate for my needs.
It's not open-source or cross-platform, but seriously..... two guys wrote it in their spare time!
I'll also ignore that comment about teaching primary schoolers LaTeX. I'm a reasonably savvy university student, and I find LaTeX absolutely unusable. It's got to be one of the most difficult and convoluted pieces of software in widespread use. It's great in concept, but make one tiny syntax error, and the compiler blows up with a 2-page long indecipherable error message. Most C compliers have better error handling.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's what I do routinely for relatives ; want a word processor ? Sure, here is my OO.o CD, I'll install it no problem, my pleasure. Oh, you meant MS Office ? I can install it for sure, but you hand me the money first so I can go and buy the boxed versi
Where it fits in (Score:5, Interesting)
The interesting thing is the timing.
Every single technology-aware teacher in Britain is at the BETT show at the moment - the trade fair for the educational IT industry. And the Eee PC is the star of the show. Rebadged it may be under various resellers' names, but it's the same old Linux-based Eee PC, complete with OpenOffice and - more significantly - 802.11g and Firefox, ready to access any number of educational webapps. Of course, it doesn't hurt that in a time of reduced Government spending, the Eee is also ridiculously cheap.
So along comes Becta and says "actually, you should look at free alternatives to Windows/Office". When they said that three years ago, everyone went "uh-huh" and carried on buying what they'd always bought. This time, there's an alternative. This is the first serious challenge to Microsoft in UK schools since the demise of the Acorn Archimedes.
Full Report (Score:5, Informative)
http://learningandskills.becta.org.uk/download.cfm?resID=35275 [becta.org.uk]
I can't read that (Score:4, Funny)
The surprising part (Score:4, Insightful)
A Government department suggesting schools investigate the use of Linux? That's rather encouraging and should be seen as significant.
Schools may not be the only problem - a UK view (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-7210652,00.html/ [guardian.co.uk]
The supported use of FOSS software could make a radical difference. Recycled hardware running free operating systems and applications could reduce the cost of student PCs to almost zero, and truly put computing within the reach of every child.
I have several computers at home that my children use for school-related activities. TOTAL cost of each (hardware, OS, office suite, image manipulation) is that of the monitor. These boxes are absolutely fit for purpose, and would otherwise be landfill.
My children regard computing at home as a commodity, which funnily enough, it is, if you step outside the wierd monopolistic force-bubble that is our educational computing practice.
The only excuse for the situation in our schools, the only reasoning that could possibly hold water, is 'They should use what they'll use at work'. This is short, snappy, and is accepted easily by those only peripherally involved in the question. I don't think it bears examination though. Some thoughts:
A trite one:
I don't believe any otherwise suitable candidate has ever been passed over because they were trained on the wrong spreadsheet, but if they were they should count themselves lucky to have escaped. They are more likely to be passed over if they didn't do well on the coursework because their parents couldn't afford to give them access to a PC.
A less trite one:
Office 2007's new UI, if it achieves the any sort of foothold on corporate desktops, will render all experience of word processing at schools until now totally obsolete. Or will it? No of course not - conversion courses will help the latest intake drive the latest software.
If this change can be handled between versions of the same product, then exactly the same case can be made for conversion between products. So (for example):
Train on OpenOffice (or other product if it's free at least for educational and domestic use, and runs on a free operating system.) With the money you save on buying no Microsoft Office or Windows licences build and deploy short conversion courses for people about to leave school, getting them up to speed on the current commercial favourites. This would spit out kids with more up-to-date experience of the commercial softwarescape than the current policy.
The benefits of this approach come from breaking the lock-in: commoditisation spreading children's access to computing in a way that otherwise only massive subsidy could (fail to) achieve; our children, their teachers and parents able to take advantage of the freely-given, high-quality work of a global community, while ending their education better trained on the latest commercial tools than they are today.
They obvious know nothing of the organizations... (Score:5, Informative)
"Becta is advising British schools to take a long look at Linux and open source suites like OpenOffice.org."
In order to *really* save money you have to go for the full monty and almost completely ditch all Microsoft products, which requires a talented IT staff. My experience with K-12 Education IT is that most IT staffs in this category can't make this work.
Re:They obvious know nothing of the organizations. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, they do, but they tend to have to commit serious crime for it to happen. Kiddy-fiddling, murder, that sort of thing (little things like defrauding the taxpayer of tens or hundreds of thousands of p
OpenEducationDisc (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not a good start of the year for MS (Score:3, Interesting)
However will this year continue, for MS? I hear that a lot of disillusioned users of Vista just decided to get macs. A little number, perhaps, but still an erosion of Microsoft marketshare. And then there's Firefox that's increasing its marketshare every month a little bit.
Not just Linux... (Score:4, Insightful)
Please Compare "Like" for "Like" (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not deny for one minute that there are a minority of specialised MS Office users who write macros and VB programs for which OpenOffice would not be suitable - but for the majority of MS Office users that do use only about 10% of its features, OO is a perfectly good substitute.
And dare I mention one important fact. I work in the IT industry and have a large group of friends who also (mostly) work in high tech industry. All of them have MS Office on their home PCs but not one of them has actually paid for it - they've either borrowed a corporate license from their workplace or use cracks of the Internet. In my experience, when these people compare MS Office to OpenOffice, they forget that MS Office should probably have cost them a couple of hundred dollars/pounds/euros whereas OO is entirely free. If they were forced to pay for their copies of MS office, they would be a lot more inclined to at least give OO a try.
Reality is a bitch (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry to spoil the party but what BECTA say counts for bugger all as they have no power beyond recommendation.
I, am the admin of a UK school that has been running Linux on all of our servers for the last three years. It's brilliant! Uptimes are long, hacking is minimal and we save a bloody fortune in licences. Centos backend running LDAP,DHCP,DNS, Mandriva boxes for Samba and Zimbra (Open Source version) running on our mail server. The desktops (much to my despair) are still running XP but the curriculum software our teachers use won't run via WINE. The IT club however is going to be running Ubuntu or Fedora 8 so at least some will get the point but I digress from the point that I wish to make which is "Building Schools for the Future" or "Fucking-up Schools for the Future" as it's often to referred to by those of us that the council claim have been fully consulted when in fact we haven't heard a word.
Building Schools for the Future (BSF) is the governments plan to scratch build new school buildings for every school in the UK. Sounds great doesn't it but what they don't mention is that the building of these schools is a PFI (Private Finance Initiative) project that will lead to these schools; a) costing more long term than keeping them public and b) being run by private companies with the tax payer footing the bill (and the CEO's bonus).
On an ICT front, computing services will be tendered out to private companies along the lines of Capita and RM. Let's play spot the Linux oriented company in this lot shall we? Oh right, they're aren't any and that probably explains why leading edge BSF schools aren't running Linux. Whole counties are run on SIMS (School Information Management System) and it doesn't run MySQL or Postgres as the backend (Take a guess). The collection of data from schools will also be centralised to the governments education department which will require compatible software and all this is happening now.
And here folks is the problem. BECTA have been spouting on about Linux for years now and you will be hard pressed to find anything except Windows in schools because once you get to a certain level of decision maker no-one cares as it's just a few extra zeros on the end of number that's already very large. Part of this is probably down to the fact that no-one actually seems to know how much BSF is going to cost even though they are trying to sign service companies up to it. You can probably throw whatever figure you want at it and it will get paid because, like the Olympics, it's a Government prestige project that the tax-payer will underwrite. Obviously, if Linux did look too promising, educational XP licences would be extended and discounted to ensure that whatever converting cost, it would be more than the status quo.
I'll believe Linux in schools when, and only when I see it. Until then it's a fairy tale.
Re:Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Thor [harringtonmuseum.org.uk], the very first US ballistic missile system, was deployed between 1959 and 1963 from bases in the UK. These were the days before intercontinental ballistic missiles. The missiles were controlled by the UK but the warheads were controlled by the US. A dual-key system was in place that required both UK and US authorisation to launch.
However, the situation has changed since the 1960s. The UK still leans heavily on the US for its nuclear capability, and today it uses Trident missiles which are shared with the USA in a common pool. However, the warheads on British subs are designed and built in the UK, and the UK has the ability to use its nuclear weapons completely independently of the US. The USA has not always been completely comfortable with that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Trident_system [wikipedia.org] http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/E2054A40-7833-48EF-991C-7F48E05B2C9D/0/nuclear190705.pdf [www.mod.uk]
Re:Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but they're British nuclear weapons. Before you could launch them, therefore, someone would have to come out and knock on the silo door to say that the power cables were never actually connected during installation, so they need to dig up the street to connect them--but first they have to get permission from the city council, which takes three weeks, and then six weeks later after the work's finally done, your actual launch technician is a toothless yob named Nigel with an Exeter City FC tattoo, who promptly says "Well, it's a nuclear warhead, innit? More than my job's worth, pushing that button." He then re-disconnects your power cables and fucks off for another six weeks while you call the same number over and over again trying to get someone else to come out, but only reaching "Kenneth" in Mumbai....
Good for the US economy!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
I would like to point out that Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Novell, FSF, Linux Foundation are all based in the US. So good for US.
Re:Let me just be the first to say (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Negotiation ploy (Score:5, Interesting)
From the report, only 20% of computers in the schools are even capable of running Vista and Office.
2005 called (Score:5, Insightful)
No, really. I'm tired of answering your fucking phone.
Perhaps you might have been "insightful" two years ago, but Linux (and FOSS in general) is much more accepted and deployed in real-life situations these days. Nowadays, especially with Vista, people are serious when they talk about switching to Linux. It's no longer a negotiation tactic. It's *fact*. It's honest.
I've helped with Linux migrations for businesses that didn't even know Linux existed two years ago. Believe me, people are *tired* of taking it up the ass from Microsoft.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Poor Computer education already (Score:4, Insightful)
On the contrary, I think the computing diversity we had in the 80s is sorely missed.
Re:Really. M$ Blew it. (Score:5, Funny)
This is BECTA's final report [becta.org.uk], the result of a two year study. Last year, they practically begged M$ for case studies and pilot projects to prove Vista's worth. There are only two reasons M$ failed to answer BECTA's concerns:
No, three reasons: