A lovely article about the difficulties a Linux user had Switching to Windows. http://madpenguin.org/cms/html/47/5937.html
Wayne Stallwood wrote:
A lovely article about the difficulties a Linux user had Switching to Windows.
Reasonably accurate too ;) Familiarity with OSs other than windows should be taught in schools.
On 1/10/06, Steve Engledow <steve@iffirewouldfall.com> wrote:
Wayne Stallwood wrote:
A lovely article about the difficulties a Linux user had Switching to Windows.
Reasonably accurate too ;) Familiarity with OSs other than windows should be taught in schools.
Unfortunately schools felt the pressure to teach the industry standard (IBM compatible, followed by "Designed for Microsoft Windows"), and RISC OS and Mac OS faded away. Fortunately Mac OS is on a resurgence in the home environment, and Linux isn't going to go away. Tim.
Tim Green wrote:
Unfortunately schools felt the pressure to teach the industry standard (IBM compatible, followed by "Designed for Microsoft Windows"), and RISC OS and Mac OS faded away.
Fortunately Mac OS is on a resurgence in the home environment, and Linux isn't going to go away.
Tim.
And a major part of that "industry standard" is Microsoft Office. Not only is familiarity with the world's dominant office package almost a prerequisite on many CV's, but also .doc and .xls files are still the de facto formats for exchanging data in the business world (though this is clearly changing with high profile shifts toward OASIS and PDF formats). The ever improving functionality and interoperability of OpenOffice, StarOffice, Abiword etc. which run happily on non Microsoft platforms help allow businesses to choose non Microsoft platforms, which in turn should allow schools to do the same. Safe
Hi to the new members. Now to ask for help opening education: "Safe Hammad" <safe.hammad@sandacre.com>
And a major part of that "industry standard" is Microsoft Office. Not only is familiarity with the world's dominant office package almost a prerequisite on many CV's, but also .doc and .xls files are still the de facto formats for exchanging data in the business world (though this is clearly changing with high profile shifts toward OASIS and PDF formats).
...and that's a long-overdue change. So-called "industry standards" are nearly always totally non-standard and Microsoft formats aren't well-suited for document exchange. See http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/no-word/attach.html I think it's a total scandal there's tax-funded state advertising and supply of software from a large dominant foreign company when there is so much opportunity to develop our local economy. Where does "education" think pressure to teach only an "industry standard" is coming from, anyway? The business world is asking for more transferrable, more flexible, more general skills. Retailers ignore previous training if it's only in one particular system: office-based businesses do the same. Most current state computing training looks like a waste of student time and a waste of our money, because it's only one particular system. The general concepts and principles are taught by a few visionaries and don't appear in the most common ICT qualifications. I guess it's no surprise that the education regulators don't act on this. They're usually the local and national governments who are also mostly terrible and publish in Microsoft formats unless they get badly burnt by the lack of privacy in those files. Even when nice words have been said about free software use, that has a bad habit to slide to "open source" which is then easily subverted into "open standards" or "open frameworks" which becomes ESR's "widget frosting" way of letting the same few proprietary suppliers keep their noses in the trough. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance... So, the bodies who spend our taxes on education have shown that they are not competent to spend it wisely when IT is involved. We need to fix this ourselves, using the few levers we do have, like we can use the e-Government Interoperability Framework, Best Value, discrimination and information directives/laws to make government open up and stop giving free ads to a few suppliers. Are there current similar official directives for education? If you know it, add it to http://open.egov.org.uk/ please. Thanks, -- MJ Ray - personal email, see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Work: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ irc.oftc.net/slef Jabber/SIP ask
On Wed, 2006-01-11 at 01:29 +0000, MJ Ray wrote: [snip]
The general concepts and principles are taught by a few visionaries and don't appear in the most common ICT qualifications.
That's sort of what I was going to post last night. Although it is disturbing that pupils only get exposed to one platform (when I was at school we had at least two available ,CP/M and the not so IBM compatible RM Nimbus) I think with properly structured ICT lessons it is irrelevant to a certain degree. The software on the systems I used at school was completely different to what I was using at home and used in my first job, but the ICT lessons were still valuable because the basic fundamentals of (for example) how a spreadsheet works and what it can be used for are still relevant regardless of software or platform. Actually I am going to be slightly more radical here and say that there should be less focus on ICT lessons until the final couple of years. At the couple of middle schools I help out from time to time a good portion of English, French, Maths, Geography and some Science lessons are held in front of computers anyway...the kids are encouraged to use the (heavily locked down) internet access both for research during lessons and at lunchtime for recreation, and every child has an email address. So given all that I don't see what necessary computing skills ICT lessons add, If the kids need to learn how to create Websites, Simple Databases etc then this should be an optional module towards the end of their compulsory education. I would also like to see minimum standards achieved in things like Handwriting, Spelling, Grammar and Arithmetic before the respective subjects are moved over to the Computer room. When there are dedicated ICT lessons I would like the teachings to be centred around core ICT subjects rather than being focused on things like "create a website in frontpage"
participants (5)
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MJ Ray -
Safe Hammad -
Steve Engledow -
Tim Green -
Wayne Stallwood