[SC.LUG] OpenOffice in schools

[George]

David Holden wrote:
>> But if Open Office will not write an Office 2003 compatible version of
>> this assignment, will it be able to read it on a Windoze PC?  Would a
>> PDF version be acceptable?
> 
> I'm not suggesting saves as office 2003, I say save as ODF and tell them to 
> download openoffice.

I'm finding it hard to visualise a situation in a school where that 
would do anything other than get you 0 marks for the assignment.

OpenOffice's ability to save in Word97 format should be acceptable for 
this situation. PDF might be a good alternative however if a teacher 
wants electronic submission of a document it's often because they want 
to annotate it and they won't be able to (easily) do that with a PDF.

You have about no chance of getting OpenOffice adopted in a school because:

a)	The licences for MS Office for a school are close to free
b)	If you use something other than office in the labs a sizeable number 
of parents will complain that you aren't preparing their children for 
the business world. Yes, this is "wrong" because you should be teaching 
them skills not packages but nevertheless they'll complain, likely 
supported by the teachers who Don't Like Change.

There is likely also a...

c)	The County will recommend that schools use the same Office package as 
the rest of the staff. You would need to persuade them to change first 
(which would include Enterprise level features, integration, migration, 
retraining and all that Jazz) before they would then change their 
recommendation.

George