[SC.LUG] OpenOffice.org@Wilmslow High School

[FatMax]

Not even 9.1/10 for initiative? ;)
As the article in the Guardian implied the current OpenOffice.org
projects running at WHS are as much about business ethics as they are
about the technical merits of any particular software platform. Jason
has a pretty good point about Internet access in Malaysia but may be
unaware that this is a fairly recent development - the result of a
United Nations Development Programme
http://www.undp.org.my/Press/docs/pre060302.asp
And who got their foot in the door first? The Ministry of Education's
popular products page makes interesting reading!
http://www.moe.gov.my/select/explain.htm
The licence fees and per capita cost of MS Office in terms of gdp
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/ghosh/index.html
were another determining factor in our choice of Malaysia. BTW any
teachers reading - those figures in the link above make a nice little
modelling exercise for Calc!
WHS projects are a VERY small attempt to encourage the use of FLOSS
in Malaysia. We've sent out about 100 discs so far with another 100
to go in the next fortnight. Our distributor in Malaysia sends 3
discs to schools (and now small businesses) on request encouraging
them to burn and distribute more CDs. We've also put together some
Thai CDs for the a school in Sussex that is launching a similar
project. The next batch we'll send out is a set of 50 "twin-packs" -
disc#1 OOo for Linux and #2 OOo for Windows. Each disc contains
localized versions in English, Bahasa Melayu, Chinese (traditional
and simplified), Tamil and Hindi. Where else can you get 12 versions
of an office suite for £0?
The WHS project is currently being run as a non-profit organisation
by a small group of year 10 business studies students so...
 <spam>
...if you're in the market for reliable office software at under a
fiver you can find them listed at
http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/#cdrom
</spam>
Back at WHS the introduction of OOo is a VERY VERY slow process :( We
currently have it installed on about 30% of our curriculum machines
but I'm the only one here who uses it regularly with students.
Nominally, all students and staff have a choice of OOo or MSOffice -
depressingly the majority of students (and ALL the staff) opt for the
comfort of what they're used to. Younger students however seem a bit
more inclined to experiment so chip, chip, chip... ;) Articles like
the one that appeared in the Guardian, and earlier the local paper,
are useful because they get staff and parents asking questions - not
to mention the fact that the school's management just love this type
of publicity! I see light at the end of the tunnel...
Regards all
Paul Burgess
Wilmslow High School