Canadian academia and open source

[Marc Lijour]

On Wednesday 19 October 2005 11:35, James Knott wrote:
> James Knott wrote:
> > kburtch-Zd07PnzKK1IAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org wrote:
> >> James Knott <james.knott-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> said:
> >>> kburtch-Zd07PnzKK1IAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org wrote:
> >>>> At May's PegaSoft dinner meeting, Linux in schools (not universities)
> >>>> was discussed:
> >>>>
> >>>> "There has been a significant interest in Linux in schools,
> >>>> particularly
> >>
> >> in the
> >>
> >>>> UK.  The problem with bringing Linux into schools in Canada is that
> >>>> schools here have established agendas, hierarchies and large budgets. 
> >>>> There needs to be spending cuts to education in order to generate
> >>>> interest in Linux.  Schools in the UK have smaller budgets making
> >>>> Linux more attractive."
> >>>>
> >>>> http://www.pegasoft.ca/minutes/may_2005.html
> >>>
> >>> I guess you missed this.
> >>>
> >>> <http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2004-05/sunflash.20040527.1.html
> >>>>
> >>
> >> No, it was discussed.  I believe the opinions were that they were buying
> >> a commercial product (StarOffice) not OpenOffice.  The point was that
> >> the heavily funded and beaucratic school boards in Ontario will always
> >> buy the commerical software and most of them are heavily biased against
> >> installing Linux or using open source because they don't care about
> >> price--they can always pass the cost back to the government.
> >>
> >> This is compared to the UK where the school board are run differently
> >> and Linux and open source are more attractive options and meeting with
> >> much success.
> >
> > 1) I believe the "educational" StarOffice licence is free.
> > 2) People using StarOffice at school are more likely to consider
> > OpenOffice elsewhere, than those who've only used MS Office.
>
> Forgot to mention, StarOffice is built on OpenOffice.

StarOffice is free for Education (see license).
Buying the CD would cost you a flat fee of 25$, which was of great value 
because the admin gets to install and carry the CD everywhere he wants plus 
it had some add-on I believe (manual?). Talking about manual, SO-OOo are 
fully localized and SO comes with a 500+ pages manual and OOo is starting to 
get pretty good tutorials of all kinds online (prepared classroom material).

I work in a high-school and the board is becoming tougher and tougher. I 
cannot even have access to the username list of my students, forget about 
setting up accounts, install programs, and give an opinion. Behind me there 
are other generations of frustrated teachers.
My point is this: the politics at the board and whether or not they are 
knowledgeable will rule your day-to-day life.
I have offered countless times free advice, help, web application to respond 
to some needs, programs, network evaluations, and so on. And basically all is 
ignored.
However there is a HUGE potential for improvement, even if limiting the scope 
to sync with today's technology (move from win98 to XP at least, or better 
Linux), move from VB apps to more solid and user-friendly apps, ...
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml