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 +0000, 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.
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