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Story: Government: Open source could halve school IT bills
Posted by: Anonymous (Tuesday 10 May 2005, 3:52 PM)
Martiin, I would agree that time constraints on learning new technologies are a problem. How can one get up to speed on "X" if you're constantly working on keeping "Y up and running? This same paradigm applies to users as well. In school there is precious little time to spend on training teachers. Couple that with contractual limitations on how much training we can *require* teachers to attend in *any* area, be it technology, curriculum, you name it, and you are pretty much depending on your users to figure it out for themselves. Deploying open source, and more importantly, free software, the monies that would normally go into licencing costs could then be diverted into paying for substitute teachers while the staff attends training, as well as other areas that more directly affect our product, which is an educated student.
Sounds to me like you're not willing to explore alternatives unless forced to do so, which is very understandable from an end users perspective, and to be honest, for many in IT as well. I don't mean to be deragatory when I say it's probably a good thing you're a journalist and not an IT decision maker.
You can get your feet wet by downloading OpenOffice.org. The 2.0 beta is stable and happily coexists with MS Office. Just make sure you don't select it as the default document handler for .DOC, .XLS, and .PPT files. That way you can get your feet wet without leaving the environment you're confortable with.
I switched to Linux at home earlier this year, and my wife, who is not a tech person, was able to get up to speed immediately, with increased productivity due to not having to deal with virus and spyware issues. She's had no problem switching to openoffice, nor gnome, one of several available graphical environments for linux and other *nix enviroments. Believe me, if she *had* experienced problems, We'd be back to running windows at home ;)
The biggest barrier to most organizations taking the plunge is lack of third party support, but this too getting much better, and at a rapidly accelerating pace. If this occurs, be prepared to learn. You may not have a choice, at least at work.
Full Talkback thread
Story: Government: Open source could halve school IT bills
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This is an excellent opportunity for open source,... Anonymous -
How very amazing this result is ...
Look at the so... steffen
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Great. We'll have a generation of people taught to... Martin Scholes
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This would be a money saver but also a great... Mike -
To Martin Scholes: Please, stop spewing rubbi... Abe
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Abe, your inability to enter into a deba... Martin Scholes -
Martin,
Rather short-sighted. Have you even... Anonymous
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martin's comments:
this is a very narrow pers... george
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Fear of change? Or a lack of time to emb... Martin Scholes
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ajority of offices use MS Office pr... Andrew M.A. Cater -
Should our head of IT decides... Martin Scholes
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@ martin:
"We'll have a genera... Anonymous
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Thank you, annonymous.
Perhaps... Martin Scholes
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Martiin, I would agree that time co... Anonymous -
we run only linux (xandros) at... george
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@ George
George, you make some... Martin Scholes
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Learning a non-standard software? Sounds like... Steve Conners
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@ Steve Connors
Unless, of course, it is... Martin Scholes
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In Canada, the PEEL District shool board is or has... george
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I think everyone here is missing the point.
I hav... Marc
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*Please* can we have some balanced views and... Chris Nixon
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"Great. We'll have a generation of people taught t... Seb
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It has been suggested that schools could only use... Martin JD Green
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So little time and so much to do.
I often hear tha... Arthur B.
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Arthur, the environment in which I work is a... Martin Scholes
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