Re: Good news - UK government officially adopts ODF

On Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 9:03 AM, nathaN P <[email protected]> wrote:

>
> *Unfortunately, I think the educators are influenced by the
> businesscommunity - e.g. teach Word skills, Dreamweaver skills, etc. :(*
>
> Yes I agree - I heard first hand this week that Otago Polytech are still
> funnelling students into needing Microsoft for their computing classes :( x2
>


As I sit in my office at the Polytech (using my Debian system) preparing
class documents (using vim and LaTeX to produce PDFs) for my upcoming class
(In which we use FreeBSD and GNU/Linux and Windows), I have to take very
strong exception to the above.  My colleagues and I use and teach about
proprietary software where it is appropriate, but also use and teach about
free software where it is (i.e. frequently).

Cheers,
Tom


>
>
> On 24 July 2014 08:43, Kathinka <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 24 July 2014 06:51, Chris Bannister <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 11:46:08PM +1200, Rob Pearson wrote:
>>> > Some good news,  back in February there were hundreds of submissions
>>> > supporting ODF to be adopted as the UK Government standard for editable
>>> > documents.   If you submitted, well done, as this was successful.
>>> https://www.gov.uk/government/news/open-document-formats-selected-to-meet-user-needs
>>> >
>>> > This isn't to be confused with open source software,  'Open Standards'
>>> also
>>> > enable proprietary software vendors to flourish, plus allows all other
>>> > businesses to break out of the stifling vendor lock-in environments
>>> > currently creamed by Microsoft and their cross-licensed colluder Apple.
>>> >
>>> > Now if our NZ government could change its recommendation from
>>> Microsoft's
>>> > 'proprietary' OOXML file format to the Open Document Format.   And
>>> while at
>>> > it,  change things so that our government websites are mandated to be
>>> tested
>>> > on a minimum of a cross platform(vendor) web browser,  currently most
>>> are
>>> > only coded/tested for Microsoft Internet Explorer and/or Microsoft
>>> Windows
>>> > operating systems, surprisingly this includes websites mandated to
>>> support
>>> > 'web standards' today.
>>>
>>> In total agreement! and while we're at it get businesses to stop
>>> emailing in HTML.
>>>
>>> Wasn't there something in the last few years about reducing the
>>> Government's reliance on Microsoft ... ahh ...
>>>
>>>
>>> http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ntn/ntn-20090527-0908-Government_reliance_on_Microsoft.ogg
>>>
>>> Wouldn't the next step be targetting the education curriculum, e.g.
>>> teach email as a text based medium on an OS independant platform, rather
>>> than "You wanna learn email"? then opening Outlook and explaining the
>>> features.
>>>
>>> Instead of teaching document preparation by immediately opening a word
>>> processor, and then pointing out all the features, it should be taught
>>> in an OS independant, program independant way.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, I think the educators are influenced by the business
>>> community - e.g. teach Word skills, Dreamweaver skills, etc. :(
>>>
>>>
>>> Job advts where computer use is part of the job state that applicants
>> need to be conversant with - and then name specific software instead of
>> saying word processing or spreadsheets etc.
>>
>> Kathinka.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> DunLUG mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> http://lists.ethernal.org/listinfo/dunlug
>> DunLUG Wiki - http://dunlug.kallisti.net.nz/
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> DunLUG mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.ethernal.org/listinfo/dunlug
> DunLUG Wiki - http://dunlug.kallisti.net.nz/
>

_______________________________________________
DunLUG mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.ethernal.org/listinfo/dunlug
DunLUG Wiki - http://dunlug.kallisti.net.nz/