A little bit off-topic now, but Becta gave one good reason in their report to recommend 'open software' in educational environment.
My summary: - Some say students should be familiar with 'industry standard' software (meaning Microsoft Office). - Not true. Students are now highly computer literate. They can use many types of applications. - Multi-vendor skill sets should enhance employability in the 21st century, not limit it. Excerpt from the report follows. Becta recommends 'freely available software' instead of so-called 'industry standard software' in it ( http://publications.becta.org.uk/download.cfm?resID=35275 ): ---- quote ---- Addressing issues of mind set 6.12 Some schools and colleges take the view that they need to use a specific proprietary software product because that product is widely used in industry and commerce, and, the argument goes, students need to be familiar with what is in the real world ¹. ...(snip)... 6.13 However, students today are usually highly ICT literate, and are likely to use a wide range of ICT software in school or college possibly even a wider range at home. They can also happily switch from using computers at school to those at home or in the local library or internet café. They would be very unlikely to be incapable of using a particular version of an office productivity suite when they left school because they had become used to using (say) OpenOffice.org at school. 6.14 In summary, the familiarity ¹ argument is more suited to pupils of the 1980s and 1990s than to those of the 21st century. Indeed it would be a poor testament to today ¹s ICT education if, on leaving formal education, young people were unable to use a basic software package (such as office productivity software or a web browser)just because it had some differences in functionality, or in its user interface, from the one they had used at school or college. Multi-vendor skill sets should enhance employability in the 21st century, not limit it. ---- end quote ---- Fred _______________________________________________ Advocate mailing list [email protected] http://badvista.fsf.org/mailman/listinfo/advocate
