OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas

Educators, this is for you! The first K-12 Open Minds (open source software) conference is October 9-11, 2007 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

The first K-12 Open Minds conference is going to be held October 9 - 11, 2007, in Indianapolis, Indiana. The kick-off reception is Tuesday, the 9th, with the regular conference sessions on Wednesday and Thursday, the 10th & 11th.

The Open Minds Conference is the first national K-12 gathering for teachers, technicians and educational leaders to share and explore the benefits of open source in education. Virtual Learning Environments that provide 24X7 access to teaching and learning resources, cutting-edge and easy-to-use desktop applications, coupled with powerful management tools and low-cost computer strategies make the classroom of tomorrow available today!

Schools around the United States and the world are discovering the the benefits of open source software. In Indiana alone, over 100,000 students use open source software every day. Not only does open source save money, it allows schools to extend the benefits of technology more broadly, affording a better education to students.

I think this is the must-attend event of the year relating to Free and Open Source Software in K-12 education.  There are currently over 55 planned conference sessions, covering a the use of Linux and Open Source use in classroom, teaching, technical, and leadership aspects.

The individual registration fee is $100, or $89 each for groups of three or more. Register on the website or call Anthony Yanez, Registration Coordinator, at 800.940.6039, extension 1348.  Compared to other conferences I've been to, this is a huge bargain.

This is a great opportunity to really find out how much you can benefit, and how much money you can save, by using open source software. And of course to learn enormous amounts about using the software.

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Back to School: A few of the many, many sites with free clip art for schools

I've been working on finding more fun goodies for education. Here are a few site with free clip art including stuff from the Discovery channel!

(I'm pretty sure that these are all free but I would be remiss if I didn't say that it's best to check the licenses yourself, as well.)

Some clip art

http://clip-art.kaboose.com/index.html
http://school.discovery.com/clipart/new.html
http://www.teacherfiles.com/clip_art.htm  (BIG collection)

Free animations
http://register.freeze.com/download/index.aspx?sx=348413c5-d957-4f6c-bfe7-d91ca643ee6a

Add it to the Gallery for easier access.

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Educators: Do schools really care about Vista? (Or Microsoft Office 2007?)

Wesley Fryer has a nice take on Vista and schools.

http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2007/01/30/vista-is-out-but-do-educators-care/

He says, among other things:

Well, Windows Vista is now on the market, but my question is: Do any educators care? I don’t know of any midwest U.S. school districts planning to make the transition to Vista anytime soon.

I'm skeptical too.  (But you knew that. ;> )  Really, though. What's the attraction? I'm not sure what genuine benefit, matching the amount of money that would have to be spent and the effort to upgrade, that schools get.

What happens when your current licenses run out, though, or when MS comes aknockin' and says, upgrade or else? (I'm not exactly sure how all the licensing systems work but I believe in general, you have to upgrade sooner or later.)

Open source, perhaps?

I'm not saying OpenOffice.org and Linux are for everyone, but I think they deserve serious evaluation by any educators with limited budgets.  (I assume that's pretty much all school districts.) When the software doesn't cost anything, that frees up an awful lot of money. Which means students and teachers can get a better education, better facilities and supplies, and better salaries.

But it's a pain to switch. Yes. Any change is a pain. Switching from WordPerfect to Word was a big pain for most people, who left WP kicking and screaming. It's part of using computers.

Just take a real look at each side. For staying with Microsoft and for going with open source, evaluate all the money and  training and lost time and converting the documents and installing the software and networking and everything else. Then when you have all the facts, do a comparison of what it really would be like on Vista and MS Office 2007, versus what it really would be like on Linux and OpenOffice.org (and Firefox and Moodle and the other cool education-related pieces of open source software out there).

One public organization with 3000 employees is saving 2.8 million dollars over the next six years, just by switching to OpenOffice.org. That's a lot of money.

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UK Schools Advised Not to Upgrade to Vista and MS Office 2007

"The British Education Communications and Technology Association (BECTA) released a report last week advising UK schools that there was no reason to upgrade to Vista and Office 2007 at present.

 

BECTA argued that a "persuasive business case for the level of investment needed to deploy the products" was needed before they would change their recommendation.

 

The reasoning behind the recommendation is as follows:

 

Office has no "must-have" features for education and is geared towards businesses and there are concerns over file compatibility with the new version (despite being able to set Office apps to save in current 2003 formats by default). Also, schools should not deploy Office 2007 until it will interoperate with products that use the ODF file format such as OpenOffice."

Wonderful to hear so much common sense.

Read more here.

And in Computerworld.

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Education and Technology Trends for 2007

I got very excited while reading this article from Wesley Fryer about education and technology in 2007.

Within five years, [Plano Independent School District Technology Director Jim] Hirsch predicts, not a single desktop in this 52,000-student school system in metropolitan Dallas will carry the image of a proprietary school software program. Gone will be the familiar Microsoft applications and desktop icons that over the years have become synonymous with document creation. In their place will be a suite of lesser-known, but equally capable alternatives--or, what Hirsch likes to call "open technologies."

He also talks about the great work done by the Strategic Open Source Initiative and Steve Hargadon.

This all ties into another project I have for early this year, which is to develop a promotional system of low-priced educationally priced site licenses for my workbooks. I want to make it as easy as possible for schools to adopt OpenOffice.org. I'll blog here when I have the details worked out.

Let's make 2007 a year of open source in education! If you haven't looked at tools like OpenOffice.org or Moodle yet, give'em a try or talk to someone who knows about them. If you've tried them and like them, talk to your administration about doing a pilot project. And if you get resistance, read this post. ;>

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Question: Why Aren't More Schools Switching to Linux and OpenOffice.org?

Note: Steve Hargadon has an interesting post on this same topic.

I was teaching on Bainbridge Island, Washington a couple weeks ago. Their school district, one of the best in the state or possibly the best in the state, is in the process of  switching to Linux thin clients and OpenOffice.org. You should see the performance of OpenOffice on their setup -- it takes a couple seconds to start the program. Yes, to start it.

The school district is saving several hundred thousand dollars just by switching to OpenOffice.org. I'm not sure how much additional money is being saved by switching to Linux.

The teachers who I trained had the usual reaction -- "Hey, this is really similar to Microsoft Office. What was the big deal about switching?"

Which leads me to ask any and all of you who are reading this blog.

Why haven't more schools switched to OpenOffice.org?

It's the perfect fit. Free. Lets you spend money on something really important, education. Schools are perpetually short of money and teachers are underpaid.  It's hard to find something in the real world that would do more good for a school than to switch to OpenOffice.org. (Or another open source software product that would save as much money.)

There's the Microsoft campaign of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt), of course. There's inertia.

But is there something else?

Are there teachers reading who'd like to know more, or share frustrations with open source?

Let's talk about this. It frustrates me that such a good thing isn't being done. There could be schools across the country, across the world, with smaller class sizes, better teacher salaries, and better facilities and supplies, by saving money on software. Let's make it happen!

 

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The World's Biggest and Best School, Resume-Maker, and Source of Available Internships: Open Source Projects

I came across this post by Jon Udell via Ted Leung. Essentially, the gist is that open source projects offer a tremendous opportunity.

"Open source software development, to a degree unmatched by any other modern profession, offers apprentices the opportunity to watch journeymen and masters at work, to interact with them, and to learn how they think, work, succeed, and fail. Transparency and accountability govern not only the production of source code but also the companion processes of design, specification, testing, maintenance, and evaluation."

I'm so glad Jon wrote this, since it raises a great point about open source that's entirely unrelated to the topic of how and when and why to use the programs. It's a point I've carried around in my mental model for years. Open source projects are a wonderful place for anyone to get experience about what they like to do; get experience so that potential employers will give them a second glance; and get experience so that they will actually learn to do those tasks well.

Experience is really important.

I listen to the This I Believe series on NPR, and if I were ever asked to do an essay on something that I believe very strongly, it would be this point about experience. Theory is squat until you try it out. Like the people on What Not to Wear say, try it on! Or like your mom says, eat one bite of your Brussels sprouts. Your roommate says, just go to the party for an hour. Just, as the Nike folks, do it, and see what happens. Doing is an entirely different thing than thinking about stuff.

So that's the first point. How do you know what you want to do with your life? You really don't know how good you are at something, or what a career is really all about, or whether you like something, or anything else important, until you do it. Not study it, not watch it, but do it.  Internships are how I learned in college that I really disliked anything and everything to do with my business major, though the theory was cool enough.  (What I enjoyed was the act of learning about interesting theories about how society works--which often has very little to do with what you do with a business degree.)

Another angle on experience is its role in getting hired. Let's say you know you love project management. That is an absolute certainty. How do you get a job doing project management, on the strength of your business and communications double major and your role as a counselor at Camp Kickamonga?

And then there's the third item, actually learning to do something well. The reason that people look for experience when they hire. How do you find your Obi-Wan who will teach you how to herd cats, or have your horrible but incredibly valuable disastrous learning experience? How do you learn to do basic stuff like write courteous, direct, concise emails?

The answer is experience.

OK...how the heck do you get experience?

• I dug up unpaid internships during college.
• If your parents are in the same profession, that doesn't hurt.
• Volunteering is good. If you want to have experience with project management, figure out something in that genre to do for free for Habitat for Humanity or the animal shelter. Help to organize a blood drive. If you want to become a techwriter, I'm sure there are a zillion places that will be happy for you to document their processes.

Or there's open source projects, which are always ready for more hands and have a huge variety of tasks. It's not just for programmers. Writers, project managers, fundraising, advertising and marketing, web design, maybe even accounting--that's just off the top of my head.

So for anyone out there who's read What Should I Do With My Life and wants to try out a few things, any parent who's got a 23-year-old college graduate slacker in the basement, or anyone of any age who wants to get experience and the advantages it brings, find an open source project.

I won't even try to list them all, but OpenOffice.org is a wonderful product with a great bunch of volunteers.

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Pledge to Buy Your Very Own $100 Laptop From MIT! Pictures Too!

It's so cute! And it's closer to being available!

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/24/1210225

Here's the photo album.

You can pledge to buy one for $300. That means you get one, and two needy children each get one, too.  I've just pledged. Here's the text.

"I will purchase the $100 laptop at $300 but only if 100,000 other will too."

— Mike Liveright, digital charity supporter

Deadline to sign up by: 31^st October 2006
552 people have signed up, 99448 more needed

Open Source Education Software and Other Items

Chris Brogan lists some interesting open source education options. I'll have to check out Savvica. Shall also have to brainstorm about how to get OpenOffice linked in with this world.

http://chrisbrogan.blogspot.com/2006/03/open-source-college.html

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