[Wylug-discuss] PDA's in schools

[Roger]

Glenn Glidden wrote:
> As an IT Manager in a Leeds FE College can I add my agreement to what Rob
> has said here, frighteningly similar at our place!
<snip>
> I really would like to hear from other educational users (school/College)
> about their experiences and how they have managed to take Linux forward,
> even if it's mainly based on FOSS applications as opposed to Linux per-se.

I'm retraining as a teacher (after teaching computing in FE and with the 
OU - and use Linux almost exclusively at home).  The amount of 'Doze 
lock-in I'm finding is depressing.  For one thing, interactive 
whiteboards - as far as I've discovered - _only_ integrate with Word. 
Again, the school where I did my first teaching practice has lots of 
Powerpoint stuff on the shelf, but it isn't pure ppt, a lot of it uses 
embedded Flash (!), so not only won't OO.org play some of them back 
properly, but neither will the old copy of M$ Office 97 I have from my 
pre-*ux days.  And that illustrates the degree to which the circle is 
vicious: it isn't sufficient to use the M$ product, it is necessary to 
keep buying updates...  (In contrast, I updated OO from 2.0 to 2.1 last 
weekend simply by doing a download and install.)

Again, the school's email system was basically web-based, but when I was 
logged in over the school LAN, it's configured to use proprietary 
extensions to IE, so Firefox won't do.  (Ironically, the Internet portal 
which I can use from outside school _is_ properly web-standards-based, 
so from off-site, Firefox is fine!!!)

Yet again, to support my PGCE, I bought a Lenovo laptop.  As hardware, 
it's great - Linux went into it and just worked - but 'Doze is supplied 
tucked away on a hidden partition... and that refuses to 
repair/re-install 'Doze if the partiton size is changed (to accomodate 
Linux on another partition).

That, I think, illustrates one aspect of why schools and colleges don't 
change: the middle-ware suppliers (quite possibly under pressure from 
M$) also tie you into M$.  As illustrated by the email thing, it is 
perfectly possible to solve the problems with a standards-based 
solution, but they don't.  It so happens that I can write my own 
replacements for all those Powerpoint slides using HTML, etc. (and I 
think the replacements are superior), but it's an extra load on my time 
- and teachers don't have a lot of that to spare.

For most teachers, the latest version of M$ software (and their laptops) 
are paid for by school and, given that unnecessary expense, things 'just 
work'.

IMHO, the advocacy needs to be targeted on the next tier: those in 
ultimate control of the purse strings, the politicians.  Has/did 
everyone interested in this issue lobbied their MPs to support Early Day 
Motion 179?

Roger