The obscenity of vendor lock-in is a great issue that we can discuss in our IT classes. I have done this using some of the material and examples published on wikipedia.

Anybody who supports the recent clever abuse of the standards process and the term “open standard” can join the flat earth society along with stooges that follow vague "industrial standard" terms to specify what is good for student learning. With a big spoon, I will slowly mix them into the same pot with those that mandate particular web browsers to view online content.

Our pluralistic world is a better place because of great teachers that deliver a rich curriculum program that is packed with assorted tools such as PHP MySQL, FileMaker Pro, MS Access, Base and yes, even Dbase III. We can say as much for word processing, languages and programming tools.

Our Cambodia students cannot use Vista / Office2007 with Khmer but happily now engage with their language with OpenOffice3.0. When I mentioned this once to a department rep, the remark "Who cares about Cambodia" made my blood boil.

Please, lets not fall into the trap of mandated solutions and centralised school controls on media formatting. We should instead encourage an honest debate about open standards and good practice in our IT profession.

A teacher came in last month and asked to get rid of that thing that had apparently possessed her private laptop .. took me quite a while to figure out that the problem was with Office2007 that one of the technicians had just installed on several staff laptops. Steam generation was still very much in evidence when I reached for Office2003 so I gave that a miss, feigning a grasp for my tea plunger and invited a morning cuppa.

When the stormy atmosphere cleared, I quietly installed OpenOffice. When the software was finally registered and it had fired up, I heard behind my back a very quiet and polite "thank you for fixing the interface". Ironic but perhaps not entirely unexpected as she had been using Office 2003 until now.

It seemed that everybody she had sent her job application to couldn't open and read her precious paperwork that she had laboured and slaved over. I quickly gathered this was both partly the fault of her word processor and the recruitment online system used by the department of education. Her family efforts to support her navigation of this upgraded system only raised her frustration level.

When I quietly suggested and tried to explain the delicious details of the docx doc odt war, I was again fixed to my chair by a frozen glare that reached all the way to the file server room and stock exchange.

We did later manage to have a good chat about the deeper mysteries of why software costs so much, why it will not work on any computer, why stuff never prints out as you see it on the screen, why e-mail attachments can end up nowhere and who pays for the Internet. As I ducked out to make another brew for afternoon tea, she wanted to know how much it would all cost. When I indicated it was free, drop dead easy to use and tossed the growing smile an open cdrom that I had picked up at a conference last year.

OpenOffice.org open source software is out of Beta with a version 3 for Mac OSX Aqua. Screenshots for the curious here showing of a couple of the different applications that are powered with this software.

The free plugins and addons are better integrated and easier to download, install or unload. The interactive help built in is unobtrusive and easy to navigate. I am getting my head around some of the cute SQL stuff that can be done with the database module.

Following a recommendation by him, my school technician last week set up a new Real Estate Office with iMac computers using this software. The money saved? Went to hiring him of course. :-)

Computerworld has published an interesting story about computers rolling out to schools.

The NSW department of education has announced that it will install OpenOffice, on 41,000 computers due to be distributed to schools across the state by the end of 2008. They will also downgrade every new computer it buys from Vista to Windows XP.

The report notes that "This incurred an additional expense in the short term, he says, but was less expensive over the life of the computer. The move is less a backlash against Microsoft and more recognition that the purchasing model for software in educational institutions is changing."

It seems as if somebody in NSW is wide awake and noticed that the world of ICT is changing very fast. Good on them. I wonder if my Deparment of Education has taken note?

At a Melbourne school, the students were caught vandalizing and altering their school page on Wikipedia. Rather than just blindly blocking their Internet or school-wide access to Wikipedia, the students negotiated the repair duty of researching and updating the school page. The task was supervised by their parents and signed off by the college administration. You can spot their handiwork on the Wiki awards page as was noted as an example of the secondary school wiki entry for 2006.

At our college, we don't block Wikipedia but have made available a local copy of Wikipedia. We encourage its use as a first, fast and free version of the online version, adding network and Moodle links on our school Intranet. It works well by cutting out the space wasting padding, and multimedia eyecandy bundled into commercial encyclopedias.

If you are interested, here are some torrent download links to get you started

• Wikipedia on DVD
• Wikipedia for Schools

Our library sell these ROMs for these open source resources for a few coins (along with Open Office and other software). Next year we are going to build our first freedom toaster (self-contained, computer-based, 'Bring 'n Burn' facility) so students can bake and make their own copies. What a good idea.

• http://www.freedomtoaster.org

http://www.freedomtoaster.org

Not as funny as it sounds .. an English teacher had some horrid connection issues that caused several blue screens of death. I had too much on my plate and a technician would be able to make good any repairs until after the weekend. Instead I I tossed him a self booting Ubuntu CDROM and a spare IT student to show him how to boot from it. I was only buying him some time so he could do some typing with OpenOffice on his USB key but in fact, with no instruction they got the wireless Internet working at school, a printer and later even got it working at home. The following week he asked for it to be installed as a dual boot option and refuses to hand back the CDROM.

As he put it, "insurance from the madness with something that bloody works".

We forget that most casual users are less than forgiving with computer errors and perhaps less demanding of what we think that they might need from a computer.

The book / CDROM set Point & Click OpenOffice.org! looks interesting. I notice that users can even freely download and try out some Open Office tutorial videos.

I am sourcing an Australian supplier through our librarian and hope to try some of this out on my students in my VCE IT classroom. Interested in your thoughts.

I am excited by the thought of a wider adoption of open standards, the respect and new freedoms that it provides to end users. I liked this article in the Free Software Magazine about the file format crossroad. It mentions an easter egg used by Microsoft in Office 97 to force an upgrade from earlier versions of Office. Other companies have played the same game.

On the other hand, users of free open source software are free to examine the file format. The end user is in control of the information created in their files. The Open Khmer team was only able to fully implement Cambodian with Open Office because they had a handle on the underlying code.

In a world where increasingly we are giving up precious freedoms, what direction should we encourage schools to take?

"We live in a world of ideas and it is the freedom to talk about those ideas which gives these ideas purpose. When we trade some of our freedom for convenience, we risk all of our freedoms."  read more

I read in the Age today that business groups are tip-toeing carefully around the field of new software being released by Microsoft. We can expect some major changes with the release of Windows Vista and Office 2007 with new features, a new layout and pricing scheme. Even my department of education is negotiating a state wide licence deal.

Whilst Microsoft has changed both interfaces to make it easier to find things, I wonder if my students and colleagues didn't use many advanced features of these packages because they didnt know where it was located. Perhaps I am wrong and they didnt really need all those features to bash out a worksheet or assignment. 

Increasingly, they are becoming aware of open-source alternatives. Some have tried using OpenOffice (we use it in the classroom and it is installed on all the college computers) and some have even tinkered with Ubuntu, a Linux distribution.

In any case, time will reveal who gets the best value for money that is invested in software that is used at home or the value of installing commercial power-tools onto every desktop. What will make our world a better place to live in?

Keith sent me a small Access database for the VITTA 3in6 competition so that we could work out certificates etc.

I recall hearing that there might be a problem with editing an MS Access databases with Linux so I thought to give it a try. I should not have worried as I had this open for editing in a snap using OpenOffice Base on my Ubuntu desktop computer at home running Ubuntu.

Very cool to see it working!

The layout of Base would be familiar to most MS Access users and any Base files created are saved using the same XML format used by the open document format.

Mike keeps asking if I would like to see a Beta copy of Vista. Dont get me wrong, I'll get around to looking and probably upgrading to this product. I will admit to having a problem understanding the burning need to upgrade my VITTA,  operating system yet again. Some technical bloggers have grumbled about the overload with too many Microsoft applications released at once. I will get around it it but this will take time. For now I am pleased with OpenOffice that I can reuse my teaching notes from this year.

I have been fascinated by Virtual Machines since Donna gave me a self booting CDROM copy of Ubuntu to play about with. To date I have been tinkering with installations and tests using both Microsoft VirtualPC 2004 and VMWare 5. The former is free and the latter is full of cute features, tweaks and extra features. Virtual machines are fascinating to tinker with. There is even a cute picture on Wikipedia of Windows XP, running as a virtual machine on an Ubuntu host computer. Whils I could do this for hundreds of different operating systems, it made sense to first try the easy to use and install Linux Ubuntu system.

The folder sharing functions of VirtualPC 2004 didnt work at first when I used it to to build a virtual comptuer with Ubuntu, a Linux based operating system. Soon after, I discovered the application in the virtual Ubuntu that would permit me to share folders with my host computer by just using the laptop's wireless connection or a USB key. One of my hard-core IT students was fascinated by a copy I had running, spending some time to tinker and play with the settings to explore the different functions, layout options and file storage system. That is something that I learned at ACEC1006 conference, letting students play about with the software is a legitimate educational activity.

I was curious about the differences and read tonight a review that suggests that VMWare performs better than VirtualPC 2004. Whilst VMWare GSX is running on Google's 13000+ linux servers, this is probably not something that my students would notice. I also read some good notes in an online forum that indicate that these virtual machines work better if they are used on a hard disk drive that is physically separate from the operating system running on the host computer. I am going to try and see if it makes a difference if I copy and run them onto a 80 Gb relocatable USB2 HDD that I carry around. If this works, I can then easily run and tinker away with this on my laptop, work desktop or home computers. :-)

I have another student teacher working with me next work. I have asked him to develop and teach a 5 period Moodle teaching unit based around operating systems, drawing upon the practical task of installing both Ubuntu and Windows98 into different virtual machines. I insisted that he use Moodle, develop an online quiz and even share all his work on the VITTA website. Worried I was probably throwing him into the deep end, he just made oodles of notes, sat back with a smile and said "I like the pace are setting." (phew)

WIth the gracious assistance of my younger son, we just made an audio recording for Peter of MESA (Marine Education Society of Australia). Peter required a swag of small audio recordings for a professional marine science education project.

We had some fun stumbling over the difficult words such as "prominent". Try saying "Port Jackson shark egg case" ten times quickly. It was a snap to edit the audio clips we made to both normalise the audio volume level, removing gaffs, goofs and silent moments. I took a screen grab near the end of our project and it is interesting to reflect how we used the free open source software, Thunderbird, Firefox, Audacity and OpenOffice to complete this task. Solid workhorses that will function on just about any computer system.

Is the "market" seeking word processing skills or skills with MS Word, database design and construction or MS Access? Many generic job averts read "Screening calls and e-mails. Creating spreadsheets and typing of documents. Maintaining client database"; I would be genuinely surprised that a student familiar with OpenOffice.org would be uncomfortable using StarOffice, MSOffice, CorelOffice or LotusNotes.

I suppose that there is always going to be a tension between generic skill development and specialised applications, rather like debates over the merits of pure vs. the applied sciences. Perhaps the issue runs a bit deeper than that. Software packages are facing shorter and shorter product cycles and the amount of time it takes to for people to effectively use these products has an impact on profitability. The most competitive thing a company can do is to not just recruit staff for specific software skills to but gauge the ability of their new staff to learn. If schools want to prepare students with true educational value, they need to broaden their focus from training to embrace learning. If schools just focus just on training, they be limited by specific activities, procedures and functions If they focus on learning, then they will prepare students with many different alternative ways of doing things.

Many of us probably learned to use different software packages in our own time to solve information problems, more than you could probably poke a stick at. The Dutch call it "learning off your own bit of wood". I enjoy pushing students gently out of their comfort zone with different problems, packages and operating systems. The challenge for all school educators is to structure challenging learning experiences that motivate students, encourage deep thinking and reflection. I guess this puts students into the middle of the picture, not the market.</p>