Toolkit

Story: Government agency tells schools to shun Vista

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Vista in Schools

Whilst it is easy to dismiss Vista and Office 2007 in education as an expense, the debate here is not one of funding for that is an completely different issue, and one that has much room for debate.

To clarify my thoughts -

In areas of IT (taught to the majority of students) it should be a major concern to teach systems that students will find out of the workplace when they move into the real world.

I agree may administration departments and much industry is still utilizing older systems, whether wise or not is another debate, however much of this is due to lack of exposure to more recent systems - due in the main to the educational environment the knowledgeable employees come from, remember here many firms and organisations cut costs when it comes to advice on IT and many rely on the in house expert, certainly in the small and medium size business, large business organisations with true IT departments often run around 12 months behind release to deployment in mission critical applications. Have you seen the IT curriculum's over the past few years - many business will tell you how inadequately educated IT students often are. Yes I realize it has improved recently.

Most students will have exposure to Vista and Office 07 at home, be it on a new PC, upgrades and in many cases pirate copies. Would it not be better for them to have genuine exposure within the educational enviroment.

The cost issue is something that is tackled by Microsoft often at up to 60% discounts or more for schools and many hardware manufacturers offer good discounts in the educational market. School IT departments are also often sponsored in many schools relieving cost from the school budget.

Specialized IT Schools /Colleges are common now in the UK - are we to understand that the government does not wish these to update ?

As I said before qualified guidance is what is required in place of a blanket statement that will simple give an easy route without understanding.

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