Blog Entries tagged 'OpenOffice'

The Universal School Desktop

jspencer — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 01:00:00 +0100

or how the future is being 'Windows Proofed'

The one thing that you really need when teaching something to a group of children, students, adults, whoever, is to ensure that they are 'singing from the same hymn sheet'. Put less metaphorically, they all need to be accessing the same text book or work sheet during the lesson. If not chaos is sure to follow. Any teacher who has blith [...]

Linux triumphs in UK schools as hell freezes over

jspencer — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 01:00:00 +0100

This post comes hard on the heels of an important piece of news... at least one Open Source company has become part of the Becta's official list of suppliers to the education sector. The new procurement frame work under the aegis of the OGC relaunches the supply of ICT to education. The emphasis is clear: deliver value for money to UK schools.

It was not long ago that most commentators believed an [...]

Chrome-plated Change Management

jspencer — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 01:00:00 +0100

I have become increasingly interested in what can only be described as the Windows XP effect. My previous two posts focussed on the idea that XP is, in the user's mind, the end of the upgrade journey and that even mighty Microsoft is struggling to budge them away from XP onto bigger and 'better' things.

I assert, and would expect little dissention, that change away from XP (voluntary change [...]

Open Source will lead to the end of the world

jspencer — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:00:00 +0100

... or "Linux feels the need for speed"

A recent post has introduced me to a term with which I was previously unfamiliar. 'Click-bait' was the epithet used by a US reader to describe the title of my blog and it both intrigued and disturbed me. It means self-evidently that the title is more attractive in a sensationalist sense than the article merits. The post below is hardly sensational, it's al [...]

Can we give every school child in the UK a Linux notebook and still save money?

jspencer — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 01:00:00 +0100

The simple answer is 'yes' we could do it now and we will save the taxpayer millions of pounds.

In previous posts I have documented the exponential rise in school ICT costs over the past 20 years. The articles focussed on costing ICT fully. This meant summing the costs of software purchase, software licensing, hardware replacement cycle, support costs and&nbs [...]

When Windows and Office are given away

jspencer — Mon, 19 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100

If you are a student looking for an Office suite for college, let me inform you that Open Office 2.4 rocks; it's smart, easy to use, supports open standards, is free, can be distributed freely to your friends works on virtually any computer and now you can even get free training through the QCA approved INGOTs.

Best of all, Open Office.org's engineers have done a fantastic [...]