I am seeing and hearing a lot of discussion around the NZ School’s Microsoft Agreement. I’ve heard it on blogs, listervs, the newspaper – even today’s homegroup meeting. Don’t get me wrong. I understand all the points of view. I just think that we are missing the point. It’s not about the end user. It’s about paying the bills. Or paying the Bill and the Steve.
Back tracking …
Over the past few years schools have had access to the latest software from Microsoft – for both Apples and PCs. Although there have been slight changes as the agreements have been signed, basically this has meant that PC schools have had upgrade rights to the latest operating system and the ability to use MS Office and a host of other tools. Mac schools also had the opportunity to use MS office – until recently.
When I learned to write, I used a pencil and then a pen – a fountain pen even! I never learned to type as I was steered away from what was called the commercial courses into the academic stuff. All the same I am a reasonably efficient typist and have written quite a bit on the computer over the last twenty-something years. Yes it’s that long. 
When my office working grown up kids first learned to word process they used Word 2, firstly on Dos and then under Windows 3.1. Things looked very different to today. However, they are able to function quite well in the workforce using the latest versions of several Office products. To be quite honest there is a bit of to-ing and fro-ing between the Gemmell females as we have discovered that we are all each others’ best Help Files.
So, I don’t think the “MS Office is the industry standard” argument holds much water. Unless of course kids at college are learning advanced Office skills for specific reasons – VBA stuff for example.
That’s one discussion.
Another argument that has been put forward is the one about having children and teachers working seemlessly from home – seeing the same software in both places. Again I’m not sure. I’m writing this on a Vista powered laptop where I am trialling Office 2007. We have copies of MS Office 2003, 2000 and 1997 in this house and there are some differences. Oh and I’ve got Office 2004 on my Mac. One of the interesting things about Microsoft is that they regularly change the way that things are done. My lovely Office 2003 PowerPoints look awful on the Mac. And vice versa.
This isn’t new. In the early days when everyone bought PCDirect computers we all got a cheap copy of Word Perfect or MSWorks thrown in. Many long time techies can remember the hassles of trying to convert one of their documents into a readable format.
So what is my solution to the seamless between home and school and getting the kids / teachers to be able to operate seamlessly? There is OpenOffice, (NeoOffice is the best Mac port) , Scribus and AbiWord – all excellent office programmes that cost nothing. These programmes have all been around for a few years now and are maturing into excellent Microsoft substitutes.
And what about Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Zoho Office and all of the other emerging Web 2.0 tools … these are pretty solid Web2.0 tools that let you do all of that word processing, PowerPointing and graphing – if that’s what we want to do. I think we’ve rather missed the point of Web 2.0. It’s not JUST about collaboration and sharing – it’s a also a little bit about the tools and making them work for us. Maybe we need to be doing less stuff about using BubbleShare and YouTube and more work on why we are doing what we do.
Now I want to put my geek hat on. I’m keen on the idea of open source software and I definitely think that’s part of the way forward. With some caveats. I love Firefox and the extensibilty that the plugins offer. But I still don’t really find that (even with the latest Sunbird and Lightning plugins) Thunderbird offers me the power that I want (calendaring / phone syncing etc). But that’s OK because I’ve actually had the time and got the technical expertise to investigate that. Most people (and most schools) don’t have the resources to make those choices. And that to me is a potential pitfall in the ‘lets all investigate open source or lets all move to Linux’ path.
There is a thread on this very subject on the nzcomped listerv at the moment. The participants are having an excellent, thorough discussion. The interesting part is where the discussion started. It all came about when a member of the open source community noted the interest in open source software and asked what questions school had and what supports they would need. Maybe that’s part of the answer. Perhaps we need to put some energy into getting the open source guys on side and working with us. After all I don’t really think that Bill and Steve really want to work with us.
From xkcd.com - Black Hat Support
Related posts: