Re: [ubuntu-uk] EDM179
The problem will never be resolved if non teachers can't see it from the teachers point of view, managing a class of 31 students all with different abilities working at different paces and keeping to government guidelines as to what they should be taught and get them through SATS tests in ICT too. With no OO resources for teachers how can they be expected to teach it? In my school, the IT teachers probably trained on Wordstar or Wordperfect on Apricots! We would love to use Open Source in our school. On the server side I use as much as I can and all of it has been self taught, I would love to replace my AD server but do not have the experience to use openLdap, it is very easy to get support in MS networking, I get tons of calls offering me support contracts, but how many support Open Source? To date I have found one, and they suggested to use Novell e-directory! I once asked Redhat to help out at our school to build us a Linux network, we would then demonstrate to all schools in our region, all they could offer was to send engineers at a high cost and provide us with expensive training. On the desktop, I'd love to use Ubuntu or some other Linux, but we have too many educational apps that solely run on Windows and there are only two of us managing a network of 360 PC's and over 1000 users, hence little time for testing and research. I believe that we cannot ignore Linux, currently 2% of are students use it at home but I believe this will grow. I like using Linux, but I should not impose my preferences on others. Surely students and teachers should be given a choice on what OS / Office app they want to use? Why not build a solution that gives this choice? Jonathan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Dave Ewart Sent: Sun 12/24/2006 10:08 PM To: ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com Subject: Re: [ubuntu-uk] EDM179 On Sunday, 24.12.2006 at 20:34 +, Phil Bull wrote: > > This is the problem. > > > > The kids are *not* being *taught* about word processors, > > spreadsheets or databases. They are being *trained* to use MS Word, > > MS Excel, MS Access etc. > > > > That's a very different thing, in my opinion, and not at all good. > > Learning *about* word processors and spreadsheets has little value to > employers - learning to *use* them is much more valuable, and I think > that's where the focus has been placed. School is not simply about learning things of value to possible, future employers, though, surely? Education should have a much wider scope than that. By the time my daughters (currently aged 2 and 5) enter the job market, the IT landscape will be totally different. Learning to use MS Word won't be relevant. Having a good all-round computing appreciation and understanding *will* be of benefit. Dave. -- Dave Ewart - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - freenode: davee All email from me is now digitally signed, key from http://www.sungate.co.uk/ Fingerprint: AEC5 9360 0A35 7F66 66E9 82E4 9E10 6769 CD28 DA92 This e-mail and any attachments are intended only for the recipients listed. If it has come to you in error please delete it and let us know. This message and its attachments have been scanned for viruses but we cannot guarantee them to be virus free.-- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] EDM179
On Sunday, 24.12.2006 at 20:34 +, Phil Bull wrote: > > This is the problem. > > > > The kids are *not* being *taught* about word processors, > > spreadsheets or databases. They are being *trained* to use MS Word, > > MS Excel, MS Access etc. > > > > That's a very different thing, in my opinion, and not at all good. > > Learning *about* word processors and spreadsheets has little value to > employers - learning to *use* them is much more valuable, and I think > that's where the focus has been placed. School is not simply about learning things of value to possible, future employers, though, surely? Education should have a much wider scope than that. By the time my daughters (currently aged 2 and 5) enter the job market, the IT landscape will be totally different. Learning to use MS Word won't be relevant. Having a good all-round computing appreciation and understanding *will* be of benefit. Dave. -- Dave Ewart - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - freenode: davee All email from me is now digitally signed, key from http://www.sungate.co.uk/ Fingerprint: AEC5 9360 0A35 7F66 66E9 82E4 9E10 6769 CD28 DA92 signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] EDM179
On Sun, 2006-12-24 at 20:08 +, SteVe Cook wrote: > What people forget is that the teachers are taught MS Win , so that's > what they teach! Well, we can all see that somewhere along the line, the system went horribly wrong. We can all see the problems; but we never outline any solutions. This doesn't mean that we are unable to produce any, nor does it mean I'm gonna come up with any any time soon. Is this perhaps ever part of the problem? It doesn't mean we don't try however; just that we could all try harder. Let's pull together and fix this before it gets worse; and remember to just look round the corner at "Treacherous Computing". -- Help me get to Venezuela! http://tibsplace.co.uk/venezuela -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] EDM179
Hi guys, On Sun, 2006-12-24 at 19:44 +, Dave Ewart wrote: > On Sunday, 24.12.2006 at 09:37 -, Jonathan Lees wrote: > > OO is offered as an alternative to MS Office, it sees about 2% usage > > from students that have it at home. Our IT teachers will not touch it > > as it involves rewriting worksheets for students which have all been > > based on MS Office. However whilst Writer and Spreadsheet does'nt > > cause problems, the database package does. [...] Are worksheets and training materials something that we could work on as a community? I played around with the idea a little this morning, but I don't know if what I came up with is much use to anyone [1]. > This is the problem. > > The kids are *not* being *taught* about word processors, spreadsheets or > databases. They are being *trained* to use MS Word, MS Excel, MS Access > etc. > > That's a very different thing, in my opinion, and not at all good. Learning *about* word processors and spreadsheets has little value to employers - learning to *use* them is much more valuable, and I think that's where the focus has been placed. Thanks, Phil [1] - http://philbull.googlepages.com/SASpreadsheetBasics.tar.gz -- Phil Bull http://www.launchpad.net/people/philbull -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] EDM179
Dave Ewart wrote: > On Sunday, 24.12.2006 at 09:37 -, Jonathan Lees wrote: > >> OO is offered as an alternative to MS Office, it sees about 2% usage >> from students that have it at home. Our IT teachers will not touch it >> as it involves rewriting worksheets for students which have all been >> based on MS Office. However whilst Writer and Spreadsheet does'nt >> cause problems, the database package does. [...] > > This is the problem. > > The kids are *not* being *taught* about word processors, spreadsheets or > databases. They are being *trained* to use MS Word, MS Excel, MS Access > etc. > > That's a very different thing, in my opinion, and not at all good. > > Dave. > > What people forget is that the teachers are taught MS Win , so that's what they teach! SteVe -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] EDM179
On Sunday, 24.12.2006 at 09:37 -, Jonathan Lees wrote: > OO is offered as an alternative to MS Office, it sees about 2% usage > from students that have it at home. Our IT teachers will not touch it > as it involves rewriting worksheets for students which have all been > based on MS Office. However whilst Writer and Spreadsheet does'nt > cause problems, the database package does. [...] This is the problem. The kids are *not* being *taught* about word processors, spreadsheets or databases. They are being *trained* to use MS Word, MS Excel, MS Access etc. That's a very different thing, in my opinion, and not at all good. Dave. -- Dave Ewart - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - freenode: davee All email from me is now digitally signed, key from http://www.sungate.co.uk/ Fingerprint: AEC5 9360 0A35 7F66 66E9 82E4 9E10 6769 CD28 DA92 signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] EDM179
Hi everyone, I just joined the list and this is probably a good topic to introduce myself. I'm an IT manager at a secondary grammar school, I use Ubuntu at work for a DHCP/NTP/Proxy/Filter server and at home for other activities. Our Desktops at school are XP Pro, they have various bits of Open source software such as Firefox, Audacity, The Gimp, OO, 7zip & NVU. OO is offered as an alternative to MS Office, it sees about 2% usage from students that have it at home. Our IT teachers will not touch it as it involves rewriting worksheets for students which have all been based on MS Office. However whilst Writer and Spreadsheet does'nt cause problems, the database package does. With the other initiatives that teachers have to keep on top of and lack of extra preparation time rewriting of all the resources is impossible. If resources or books were available then this would help greatly. On the teach-ict resources website (www.teach-ict.com/) there are no Open Office materials, which is a shame as the idea in school is to teach transferrable skills and at the moment with the database program it is unclear how to use it. There does'nt seem books on Open Office either, on Amazon there is only OO for dummies. Our school cannot afford to dump all the training materials and money invested in resources that are geared up to MS Office and of course the money invested in the licences. The same goes for the DIDA course where Dreamweaver is used instead of say NVU. I fully suport Open Source values, and I really believe that our students should have the opportunity to try out alternative OS's and use Open source software but without the resources it's a no go area, if many resources become available then I'm sure it will fly. Merry xmas to all Jonathan Lees -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Toby Smithe Sent: Sat 12/23/2006 10:36 PM To: British Ubuntu Talk Subject: Re: [ubuntu-uk] EDM179 On Sat, 2006-12-23 at 22:20 +, Ashley Hooper wrote: > Found this on LinuxToday, today: > > http://www.computeractive.co.uk/computeractive/news/2171542/education-driving-force-behind > > The article starts off sounding very positive but the conclusion leaves a bit > of room for doubt. I don't think so. That's just what the organisations say. Again, the Becta response is identical to that which the Government MPs are sending out. -- Help me get to Venezuela! http://tibsplace.co.uk/venezuela -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/ This e-mail and any attachments are intended only for the recipients listed. If it has come to you in error please delete it and let us know. This message and its attachments have been scanned for viruses but we cannot guarantee them to be virus free.-- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
