Transitioning to Open Office: Case Studies Needed

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Permalink Reply by Donna Benjamin on December 2, 2008 at 2:16pm

Hey Steve,

I've pointed this out to Roland Gesthuizen - Westall Secondary College has had OpenOffice.org on their machines alongside MSoffice for some time now. They also have a case where MSOffice simply can't meet the needs of the Cambodian language learners... Some good stories there.

- Donna

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Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on December 2, 2008 at 2:56pm

Great. I'll try to follow up. Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Steve Taffee on December 4, 2008 at 5:36pm

I hope to start my school down this path next year. I have been using Open Office (or Neo Office) off and on for the past couple of years, but recently started using Open Office full time on my Mac and today just took the plunge and de-installed Microsoft Office 2008. I have a MS Office renewal coming up next month, and my current plan is to not renew the contract at our 300 copy level but perhaps 25 copies. This is simply a CYA move on my part as I have feedback from some users that scientific formulas they use in Word do not play nice with Open Office. If I can get some key users and administrators signed on, I think the transition will go well. In any even, cutting the IV drip of money from Castilleja to MS is an easier sell in this economic environment, and the fact that we're simply not signing on for further updates but frozen at our current level of use should help soften the blow.

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Permalink Reply by ben reynolds on December 4, 2008 at 6:18pm

I'm an unusual case for K-12 because my org is part of a major university. When I raised the question about OO as a financially less expensive way to go, the response was that our licensing agreement with MS was so cheap there was no incentive to move away.

Basically, at Johns Hopkins, it's $25 or less to get MS Office on a desktop comp. AND, through an agreement with all the Uni's in Maryland, a uni worker can put MS Office on a home machine for the same cost.

So I have a copy of OO 3 running on my work and home machines just to translate for my instructors when they get the rare OO document.

PS. Anyone who has used MS Office 2003+ can intuitively use OO 2 or 3, IMHO. The interface is totally easy.

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Permalink Reply by Urko M. on December 5, 2008 at 7:22pm

The usual "get them hooked" strategy, used by Microsoft and drug dealers alike :)

It makes me quite sad, because I think this is an issue of bridging the digital divide.

Do ALL the students everywhere have the financial capability to purchase Microsoft Office? Maybe so, but we can't assume it.

And if you talk about Educational licenses, but the student is using a shared computer at home, you are pushing the student and his/her family towards misuse of the license if you push for this: the other members of the family will definitely use the student's license for commercial use, sooner rather than later.

Use OpenOffice, and all these issues are moot.

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Permalink Reply by Richard on December 12, 2008 at 8:49pm

Hi Steve,

Thank you for your ongoing work on this matter and others.

Can I assume that we teach concepts and not software? So, students learn through using application software whether it is Open Office, Google Docs, MS Office. The arguments about looks, proprietary, true open source, etc. are not as relevant as curriculum, lesson plans and tools on hand. Open Office scores big because it is readily available and free, not because we want to bash Microsoft.

I teach grades 7 - 12. We did a quick unit on alternatives to MS Office (we have MS Office 2007 in our lab). Alternatives qualified if they were free, ad free, and you did not have to give personal details to the provider. This opened up online alternatives that are not open source. Students investigated alternatives, and produced presentations for the class using an alternative application suite. Many chose Open Office because it ran faster than an online alternative. Generally, students reflected that alternatives are just as good as MS Office, but not as easy to use. I installed Open Office in the lab quickly and easily. Student acceptance was instant -- it was just another tool for them to use.

The question whether they would pay for MS Office was irrelevant to the students, because almost all of them had it at home already.

To the question whether we should use MS Office in our schools, I would answer, just use what you have, ensure that students have access to open source alternatives, and whatever tools they need and focus on developing the curriculum. We aim to have digitally literate students, not Open Office, or MS Office literate students.

You talk about "a realistic look at the hurdles and difficulties that need to be overcome." This is very interesting to me because my two daughters go to a school that made the transition from Windows to Linux and Open Office. Office suite compatibility is not an issue for them. What is an issue, is that some software runs only on Windows, and all the tools they need are not available to them. As I mentioned above, our own installation of Open Office was simple and flawless. We could easily use it as alternative to MS Office, but do not need to since the school purchased the licenses already.

Thanks again for your leadership in K-12 open source discussions.

Richard

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Permalink Reply by Michael Paric on December 15, 2008 at 12:34am

Richard,
Unfortunately you can not "assume that we teach concepts and not software" as I as a parent and technology volunteer for my school district (an afluent community in Northern California) I continue to hear the old stories that "we must have MS Office, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. because that is what the students will encounter in the 'real world'". People will use the tools that they know, and if teachers get their degrees at Universities that promote MS Office, then that is what they will use in their professional careers. Perhaps we're missing the mark by trying to get certified teachers to "switch" to Open Source; the Open Source ideals as well as "teach concepts not software" must be taught to them before they get their diplomas.

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Permalink Reply by Richard on December 15, 2008 at 1:11am

Thanks for this comment Michael,

Perhaps all school labs need to have Open Source applications loaded on them for student use from kindergarten through graduate school. Once students experience how a 'lighter' program works, they appreciate the speed and efficiency. We have choices in our lab and students would much rather use FireFox than Internet Explorer as a web browser because it loads faster. Google Chrome (I know it is not Open Source) is also a big hit. The students can browse the web much quicker in the few minutes between classes than trying to trouble shoot IE7. This type of experience saves us all the trouble of 'switching' and professional development in later years.

If have an example from today. A student from drama class wanted to edit an audio background track for her performance. We downloaded Audacity, installed it in a snap, and she could get her task done. This begs the question, why enter a contract and purchase school licenses when there is a community designing, building and providing software solutions for public use?

If students use a wide sample of software they can make their own choices later. We should not decide that they should use proprietary or Open Source software. Surely, the informed will choose free or open source software.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on December 15, 2008 at 9:01am

BTW, Chrome is an interesting example because a version has been released as Open Source, and that's very much a part of the business model for the browser.

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Permalink Reply by Claude Almansi on December 13, 2008 at 10:34am

Geneva state schools went entirely to Free software last (2008) September. In English, see http://www.osor.eu/news/ch-geneva-schools-completely-switch-to-open... (but dated May 6, 2008).

If you read French, http://icp.ge.ch/gelibredu is the Geneva Dept of Education's official site about this change. The content of the DVD of educational softwares prepared for teachers by the Service Ecoles Médias can be downloaded from http://wwwedu.ge.ch/sem/logistique/telechargement2008.asp .

From what a middle-school visual arts teacher told me, teachers and students had no problems with the Ubuntu or with the OO interface. However he and his colleagues found moving from Adobe Photoshop to Gimp a bit more arduous. Some teachers thought the DVD idea was rather odd, and that sending an e-mail with URLs of the sites from which the softwares can be downloaded would have been enough. They see the DVD operation as a piece of psychological tactics: software is not tangible, a DVD is.

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Permalink Reply by Donna Metcalf on January 27, 2009 at 12:24pm

Hi Steve:

You might want to consider using Howard County Library as an example. We use Open Office on all the Public Access Computers (PACs) and on all staff computers. We run a mixed environment of Linux, Windows and Apple. In total there are about 500 computers running Open Office since 2004. If you would like more information, please contact my boss, Amy DeGroff at 410-313-7985 or by email amy.degroff@hclibrary.org.

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