Office applications Toolkit

Story: Becta takes Microsoft to the OFT

• 
• 

Shocking reality

I think Mr. Hocking is falling into a number of FUD traps here.

#1 Technology does not mean only the desktop. For example, 250,000 Yorkshire school kids use web content filtering based on Open Source. I think the same goes for Oxfordshire. Welsh counties, in particular, have deployed large web-based services on Open Source stacks. Also what about Moodle? It's the market leading VLE but isn't recommended by Becta.

#2 The old 'preparing them for the workplace' chest nut... if this were true not a single school should contemplate installing Vista because, guess what, businesses aren't installing it and won't do for the foreseeable future. Educating kids about all things ICT is about developing transferable skills *not* conditioning them into thinking the world outside Microsoft is a really scary place. In fact its quite the opposite.

#3 If you want examples of large-scale *desktop* deployments of Linux have a look at what Canonical (Ubuntu) have been up to in Extremadura or Andalucia. There are a number of reasons why this isn't replicated in the UK and one of them is Becta.

• 
• 

• 
• 
• 

Full Talkback thread