On Thu, 11 May 2006, Jacques B. wrote:
I would talk to the school system now as they will probably be
rebuilding systems in the summer. It is a great time to install any new
or updates software.
--
Robin Laing
Good point. I'd pursue that if it wasn't that I was moving this
summer. I wouldn't have time to mount a reasonable battle plan before
moving.
I'll have to face an uphill battle in September. The other option I'm
looking at is OpenOffice Portable that a teacher could run off a
thumbdrive. That way no software is installed on the school computer,
but it allows parents/students to use an open source format for their
presentations. If PPT could read open source (and accurately) it
would be a non-issue in that sense. At least parents would still have
that choice despite the school using proprietary software.
The K12 Open Source project (http://k12os.org/) has a lot of resources for
schools. They have a terminal server project that uses Fedora.
Locally Microsoft wanted to run an audit and extort money from the school.
They backed off when the school district said "How would it look if a
crying kid was on the evening news talking about his teacher being fired
to pay Microsoft?"
Powerpoint is a bad example. I agree with Edward Tufte that is causes
brain damage. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html
--
"Waiter! This lambchop tastes like an old sock!" - Sheri Lewis
