There is a school in Wisconsin that uses Linux
opensource.com
If you guys are interested in hearing the IT directors Ted talk from 2014 here it is https://youtu.be/f8Co37GO2Fc
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If you guys are interested in hearing the IT directors Ted talk from 2014 here it is https://youtu.be/f8Co37GO2Fc
So you're assuming there aren't "wage slaves" doing data entry on MS Office and also that 0% of those students won't ever be managers or hold any other more high level job that does require those tools. So you must be against teaching financial literacy at school as well because "they won't ever invest anything". Great job, let's keep the peasants illiterate in everything they actually need to climb the ladder.
Because they can't learn to put words and numbers in excel. How skillful do you think they're gonna get from one semester in excel?
One semester in Excel you have time to learn how to use it for almost everything.
Good luck teaching middle schoolers how to use a pivot table when there's barely enough time to teach the basics of Excel's convoluted user interface.
Maybe they don’t give up that easily.
You can learn Windows pretty quickly. Also this is much better than giving students locked down Chromebooks
Oh yes, but still can pose a problem. Imagine one of those students tried to apply for a backoffice job at a bank, they’ll most likely test the person’s Office skills and the student may not be able to compete the assessment and have an inferior grade to another one who always had MS Office at his school.
I've never ever heard of that happening. It was a problem 5-8 years ago but now its not expected.
Oh but it happens.
There's OpenOffice and LibreOffice. There's even Google Docs or Office 365, which run in a web browser.
Microsoft Office for Windows is about as useful as manufacturer-installed bloatware these days.
Except for the fact that it is what every major company out there uses lol
Wouldnt you keep them computer illiterate when you teach them exclusively how to use Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office?
Also that's a big jump to assume that I would be against financial literacy.
As I said on another comment:
Students can and should learn Linux / LibreOffice and can most likely do almost everything they need with it, however once they get into a job and the company uses MS Office they won’t be be able to pick the work right away and be as productive as their peers will be. Imagine one of those students tried to apply for a backoffice job at a bank, they’ll most likely test the person’s Office skills and the student may not be able to compete the assessment and have an inferior grade to another one who always had MS Office at his school.
I’m all for FOSS but we must be very responsible when it comes to what we expose young people to and how that may impact their careers on the long run. They should have exposure to Linux, LibreOffice and have a basic understanding of them but they shouldn’t be robbed of valuable jobs skills that may make a difference just because.
If you can only use a word processor because it looks like the one you have been trained on then you are computer illiterate. That's not something a school should proliferate.
You aren’t wrong, but that’s besides the point. The point is that even if you’re decently computer savvy and you can switch around between programs you’ll always be better and faster at advanced features on the one you used more hours. If you say this never happens to you then you’ve never been exposed to a program for enough time to actually learn it from top to bottom.
Well that's undeniable. But, coming back to this school, do you think that they could afford licenses for the latest MS Office and or MS Windows? No they would teach with one or more generations ago where things are laid out and function totally different.
So you get the same issues you are complaining right now and nobody gained anything.
Microsoft typically offers licenses to education... and when it comes to Windows it doesn't even matter as most retailers already sell machines with Windows licenses with very competitive prices. It's usual to see bigger retailers selling computers with a Windows license at the same price a smaller retailer would do without license just because they've the volume and get good deals from both Microsoft and hardware vendors.
I'm not complaining, just stating something that should be taken into consideration.
Well apparently bit in this case as it's too unimportant, as you said.
Who knows if they ever asked?
Well, you said.
That's fair but I was extrapolating a bit there. After all unless their IT department and IT related teachers were really inept they would've know that Microsoft offers things to education and would've got them.
Or, teach them both LibreOffice and Office 365. They'll have more technical literacy by learning to adapt to new situations rather than relying on clicking this button here and that button there.
Did you even read my comment? That’s what I said.
Apparently, I did not. Or I might have replied to the wrong comment. Either way, my apologies.
No problem 😂 We were just saying the same thing.