[ubuntu-uk] Open Source Schools Project - literacy

[Sarah Chard]

O
n Wed, 2011-09-21 at 16:18 +0200, Barry Drake wrote:

> Maybe not trying to answer your specific question, my own pet hate is 
> the insistence of teaching Microsoft Publisher in schools.  I think
> we 
> should challenge this on the grounds that MS Publisher does not
> conform 
> to an open standard and is therefore going against the British 
> Government call for open standards in all government IT.  I'm not a 
> desktop publisher user, but wonder how well something like Scribus
> would 
> fill the bill for schools?

On Wed, 2011-09-21 at 14:26 +0000, bodsda at googlemail.com wrote:

> The difficulty is, you can't just replace one product. Publisher will
> probably be licensed with a volume software licensing agreement, along
> with front page, word, excel, outlook etc etc. - so they are just
> wasting a license by not using it. If you could replace all of the
> office suite, it will be much more appealing to the schools.

This is exactly why we are running the project -  we are going into
schools with Tuxedu offering open source alternatives to the software
they are currently using - its a complicated area because schools are
locked into their MS licenses and we can't change that, so we have to
think long term whilst meeting teachers short term concerns - the idea
is that Tuxedu will be exciting and fun for the kids - the locked
version means they can use it at home running live on family machines
without their parents having to worry  - and hopefully the schools will
install it on their systems as a dual boot - we are talking to teachers
and the school techs as we go.
 At the first school we visited the deputy head was asking me about
alternative office suites - she runs XP at home and can't open .docx
files which are sent to her by work colleagues so we had a brief chat
about libre office and open formats.
Feedback from kids is good so far but unless we persuade the schools and
that means the ICT teaching staff and Head teachers to pick it up and
also the tech staff to support it we will not succeed - so it has to be
relevant to their teaching needs and that means the UK curriculum. Tony
touched briefly on this in the ubuntu-uk podcast. Getting just a few
schools in the county to seriously consider using a linux based system
as part of their ICT resources would be fantastic so we are keen to make
it as easy for teachers to accept and use as possible.

so if anyone has any ideas for FOSS literacy software please let me know

Sarah

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