Re: Good news - UK government officially adopts ODF

Tom I am sorry that you take exception to my comment but I had a family
member who has come home from Otago poly this week and the message she got
from the computing class was - she needs to get a copy of Microsoft
installed on her laptop - I saw red!

I am sure you and most of your colleagues are doing a great job around
using FOSS, but someone in the Poly ain't on the same page - yet! :)

Cheers,
Nathan


On 24 July 2014 09:28, Tom Clark <[email protected]> wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 9:03 AM, 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 :( 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.
>>>
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