Re: Good news - UK government officially adopts ODF

On 24 Jul 2014 09:03, nathaN P <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Unfortunately, I think the educators are influenced by the business
> community - 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 :(

The educator's responsibility is to equip graduates with the tools/skills to be useful in the world, regardless of the technology or license. I would be more interested to know what depth they go into - if any - about open vs closed source and the values of both.

If you compare the latest version of MS Office with the latest version of LibreOffice it's not hard to see which one is more appealing to your as average business. I'm not a MS word user but recently had to write up some thorough documentation in a Microsoft shop and was quite surprised at how much more polished the whole experience was.

What we can do is support initiatives (like the ODF format) to allow both open and closed software to exist giving all users a choice. We can also work with the educators to help them make the best choice about what to teach. Seeding this in the education sector is a solution for the future but one that has to start today. There are appropriate avenues for this in place already and I'd encourage you to email the head of department with any comments or questions about how you can contribute or get involved.

Cheers,

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