Tips by Tony

This started as an article extolling the benefits of the free OpenOffice suite versus the not-free Microsoft Office suite, but morphed into a more general rant on the importance of teaching general technology concepts, not specific software applications or suites. I’ll begin with a plug for OpenOffice.

Why OpenOffice?

OpenOffice is a free and open-source office suite that comes with a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, drawing/graphing program, and database. OpenOffice can read Microsoft Office files, including the new Office 2007/2008 file formats, and can write to older MS Office formats (.doc, .xls, etc.)

The main benefit of OpenOffice is the price: free. Since many school districts (and families) are tightening budgets and looking for ways to save money, using a free alternative to Microsoft Office just makes sense. I’ve been asked many times by teachers to recommend an alternative to Microsoft Office for their students to use at home. Not all computers come with MS Office, and many that do have only a trial version. I always recommend OpenOffice, since it has pretty good interoperability with MS Office. For what most of our students are doing (mostly writing papers,) OpenOffice is more than enough. OpenOffice is available for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, so anybody can use it.

Arguments Against OpenOffice – Red Herrings

I’ve heard a few arguments against using OpenOffice in school or recommending it to students for use at home. I have yet to hear a compelling argument against OpenOffice, however. The arguments I’ve heard are mostly red herrings.

“We can’t use OpenOffice because Microsoft Office is used in the corporate world, so that’s what our students need to learn.” I hear that argument all the time, and it’s completely wrong. For one thing, prior to MS Office the standard in the corporate world was WordPerfect. Before WordPerfect was WordStar (and Lotus 1-2-3, Jazz, etc.) Things change. Students need to learn how to adapt and use whatever software applications they may come across.

The worst thing educators can do is teach a narrowly focused technology curriculum based on false assumptions. Sure, there are exceptions – mostly in vocational schools – when specific applications should be taught. Architectural students should learn the complexities of AutoCAD. Film students should learn the ins-and-outs of AVID and/or Final Cut Pro. But for everyday word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, students should learn the basic concepts of how these programs work rather than step-by-step guides to one specific suite.

Teach Concepts, Not Applications

One thing I know from almost 30 years of using computers is that there are more similarities between software applications than there are differences. You can usually find the Print command in the File menu. You can probably find the Cut/Copy/Paste command in the Edit menu. The icons for editing text (bold, italic, underline, center, right-justify, etc.) look very similar from one application to the next. Once you learn the basics, it’s easy to move from one application to the next. Can’t find something in one place, look in another. Concepts, not specific applications.

I tried an experiment about a year ago in one of our school’s computer labs. I installed Ubuntu Linux on one of the lab computers without telling anyone. I installed OpenOffice and Firefox, and put the icons on the desktop. Then I waited. Nobody noticed for over a month that the computer wasn’t running Windows. I asked our resource center staff if that computer got much use, and they said it got used as much as the others. Students were doing online research, editing and printing papers, etc., without skipping a beat.

If I had told someone I planned to put a Linux machine in the computer lab, I would have received so much push-back you would have thought the world was coming to an end. “Who’s going to train the students? Who’s going to support them? What about the staff? They need to know Windows…” and on and on. The reality was, the general concepts of the operating system and the software applications being used are so similar the students may not have even realized they weren’t on Windows.

The bottom line is, we need to equip students with the ability to adapt to whatever new technology comes their way. Handing out step-by-step guides and isolating them in one suite of tools does not help the students in the long run, it hurts them.

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5. Monday Morning Roundup (5/11/2009)
6. Monday Morning Roundup (9/14/09)
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