[plug] Fwd: Re: [school-discuss] OpenOffice in universities?

[Leon Brooks]

For your inspiration.

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Re: [school-discuss] OpenOffice in universities?
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 09:03:25 +1000 (EST)
From: Richard Wraith <rgw at trinity.unimelb.edu.au>
To: "schoolforge-discuss at schoolforge.net" 
<schoolforge-discuss at schoolforge.net>

Dan,

Your page is an excellent resource.

We have also been making use of Linux thoughout our campus. Below are some
details and links about the use we are making of OSS at Trinity College,
Melbourne, Australia. We have had Linux at the core since we setup our
network in 1996. We do not have it on the desktop across the board yet,
but we do have two of our teaching labs setup with net-booting Linux
clients. Our long term objective is to move to mostly Linux and MacOS on
the desktop and minimise our use of MS software.

Below are excerpts from the pages of interest along with links to the
pages:

The Age newspaper's IT section had an article (which has since
dissappeared into The Age's subscription archives. But there are places
where the article can still be found...) about Trinity College's use of
Debian GNU/Linux and other Free Software and Open Source Software. The
article appeared on 5th June 2001, and has since been linked to or
mentioned in a number of other places.

http://www2.trinity.unimelb.edu.au/it/article.html
http://www2.trinity.unimelb.edu.au/it/article-links.html

Open Source Software (OSS) is central to Trinity College's educational
objectives. Use of OSS has given us the freedom and the flexibility to
emphasize the teaching of basic principles rather than training on
particular software packages. It has allowed us to customize our
curriculum for the best educational outcome for our students rather than
being constrained by closed source, proprietary packages. We have been
able to break out of the narrow view that closed source proprietary
packages are always the best option. In this way, Trinity College has
control over the education it provides, and future innovations it
undertakes.

This website is a companion to a paper by Richard Wraith, Tim Bell and
Simon Wilkinson presented at ACEC2002, the Australian Computers in
Education Conference, in July 2002.

http://www.trinity.unimelb.edu.au/lic/freedom/

Cheers,

Richard

--
Dr Richard Wraith                             rgw at trinity.unimelb.edu.au
Director of IT & T and the Trinity Learning Innovation Centre
Trinity College   Royal Parade   Parkville   3052   Victoria   Australia
tel: +61-3-9348 7112      mobile: 0417 361 093      fax: +61-3-9348 7498

On Wed, 11 Sep 2002, Dan Kegel wrote:
> Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 10:19:48 -0700
> From: Dan Kegel <dank at kegel.com>
> Reply-To: "schoolforge-discuss at schoolforge.net"
>     <schoolforge-discuss at schoolforge.net>
> To: "schoolforge-discuss at seul.org" <schoolforge-discuss at seul.org>
> Subject: [school-discuss] OpenOffice in universities?
>
> Part of my "Linux in Universities" page, http://www.kegel.com/linux/edu/
> ,
> is about managing a smooth transition to Linux.  One
> good approach is to support the same office software on both
> Linux and Windows; that way users can choose operating systems
> more freely.
>
> I'm trying to dig up examples of universities that officially
> support OpenOffice and/or StarOffice 6.0 on Windows, but am
> having a hard time.  There are quite a few examples of
> universities that support StarOffice 5.0 or 5.2 on Unix,
> but almost nothing for StarOffice 6.0 on Unix or
> any flavor of StarOffice on Windows, nor any mention of OpenOffice.
>
> If you know of any examples, please let me know.
> Thanks!
> - Dan

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