February 6th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
Volunteers from the Open Source Schools project presented on using open source software in schools at BETT 2009 (don’t know what the acronym means, but it’s a British educational technology conference in London).
Open Source Schools posted a BETT 2009 follow-up on their site:
The Open Source Schools presentation at BETT on Saturday 17th January was very well received, with good numbers joining the team in the Olympia’s Club Room, despite the early start. Miles Berry introduced the presentation, outlining what open source means as well as exploring some of the advantages which it offers to schools; he also spoke about Moodle and the Open Source Schools community. Michelle Walters talked about OpenOffice and some of the ways which teachers could get started with open source. José Picardo talked about the Audacity audio editor and Doug Belshaw discussed some of the many ways in which he’s using Linux powered netbooks in his school.
Open Source Observatory and Repository Europe also reported on the event with “UK: Open Source is Core to Education.”
It was also described, most extensively, on the Learn 4 Life blog in “Teachers are Heroes just for one day – Open Source Schools @ BETT 2009 – Why you must use Open Source Software.”
Every once in a while you see something that makes you think: ‘Yes this really is going to change education in this country’ and it makes you smile inside because you know what is going to happen further down the line and how revolutionary it will be; it will touch the lives of so many people and transform learning – making it more effective, more engaging, more personal and build a sense of community far beyond the initial event itself.
Each one of the presentations was recorded and can be viewed on Learn 4 Life’s blog linked above.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Open Source Schools at BETT 2009
February 5th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
IBM has been a significant promoter of two of my major interests: wikis (specifically for corporate intranet content management) and OpenOffice.org (specifically, IBM’s “distro” of it called Lotus Symphony).
One place where the two converge is in the Lotus Symphony Wiki, developed as a collaborative space for Symphony-related information.
IBM’s wiki engine has a very strong design architecture and user interface, so I’d like to learn more about it. (I have not seen it in use elsewhere, so I wonder if it’s in-house, or expensive, or targeted only to big enterprises…) Likewise, Symphony itself has been a great citizen of the OpenOffice ecosystem, introducing creative new user interface concepts that I think could be adopted by OOo itself (especially document window tabs and a tools sidebar).
One approach I think Symphony could take that OOo itself has struggled with, is to achieve pre-installation on new computers from OEMs. IBM’s relationship with Lenovo should help convince them to offer Symphony instead of Microsoft Works, at the very least. OEM installations would help introduce Symphony and the ODF format to many new users, helping to further expand its global userbase.
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, OpenOffice.org, Wiki | Comments Off on Lotus Symphony Wiki
February 3rd, 2009 Benjamin Horst
In the handy discussion forums at Open Source Schools (UK), a poster asks, “Is OpenOffice a suitable alternative to the use of Microsoft Office in schools?”
Members of the site are a mix of open source community members, computer-savvy teachers, and people with both skillsets.
Respondents to the original inquiry wrote things like, “I had no trouble moving to OpenOffice.org as it has at least 90% of the functionality of MS Office (the instant PDF adds another 5% for me) so most people can just start using it,” and “I have installed it on all our school machines (saving an absolute fortune) and (sneakily) removed the various versions of Microsoft Office. For the children there is absolutely no problem at all.” My favorite, however, is this: “We have used OpenOffice at Brewers Hill Middle School for the past 3 months. Half the kids did not notice the difference.” Either these kids are really smart, or OpenOffice is really good, or perhaps both…
As might be expected, some people pointed out the social difficulty of convincing teachers to change to a new product they may not have used before. Social change, not technological capability is, indeed, the toughest part of any software migration. Anyone whose job involves making shifts like the migration from MSO to OOo should be sure to focus sufficient energy on this aspect of the project. But as more and more schools and offices begin to adopt OpenOffice, the task will get progressively easier for each group that subsequently migrates.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Is OpenOffice a Suitable Alternative for Schools?
January 29th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
Mirroring the OpenOffice Extension repository, the project has recently set up a centralized OpenOffice template repository. It’s an easy way for non-programmers to get involved in the OOo project:
This Template Repository is a place for the submission of new templates made by you, the community!
You created a nice template? Submit it, get feedback and help others to be more productive!
Tying the suite in to more online services will continue to make it more and more web-native, and as the community of users and developers continues to focus on these add-on services, the rationale for using OOo will grow ever stronger. It’s a great positive reinforcement loop and a differentiator from competing software applications.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org, Social Software | Comments Off on OpenOffice.org Template Repository
January 27th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
Open Source Schools (UK) has a discussion thread on the recent announcement that 55,000 laptops pre-installed with OpenOffice.org will be distributed to students in Oise, just north of Paris.
France is no stranger to large deployments of open source software, as it has been adopted by the national police force, parts of the legislative branch of the government, and schools in other Departments:
After USB Key in Ile de France (220,000), and CDs in Auvergne (64,000), this is the third department to provide OOo to their students!
An announcement of the project in French can be found here.
A comment posted to the Open Source Schools discussion points out the efforts of Framasoft, a French non-profit focused on promoting open source software to schools and the public at large. (They also created the Framakey, a USB disk preloaded with portable open source applications, that has been distributed to hundreds of thousands of students in the Paris region and around France.)
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
January 23rd, 2009 Benjamin Horst
Twice before, I’ve noted instances where Barack Obama has mentioned the importance of open standards and open source for a transparent and democratic government.
(See Obama on ODF? and OpenOffice.org for the US Federal Government? — I used question marks in each post title since it was not clear to me how far these exercises might be carried.)
Now CNet reports Obama is asking industry experts for more information on the benefits of open source:
Sun Chairman Scott McNealy… has been asked by President Obama to author a white paper on the benefits the U.S. government can derive from open source.
McNealy is quoted in the BBC’s recent article, Calls for Open Source Government:
The secret to a more secure and cost effective government is through open source technologies and products.
The claim comes from one of Silicon Valley’s most respected business leaders Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
Particularly memorable is the BBC article’s discussion of open source as an improved form of government behavior, pioneered during Obama’s campaign:
Errol Louis of the New York Daily News seemed to agree.
He described Mr Obama as “our first open source President, a leader willing to let anybody and everybody figure out how, when and where they want to get involved.”
He noted that the strategy popularised by computer software companies in giving away software to get others to improve on it has now been applied to politics.
Indeed the new Change.gov website is said to be a portal for “interactive government” and “open source democracy.”
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Obama Investigates Open Source and Open Standards
January 22nd, 2009 Benjamin Horst
OpenOffice.org Ninja takes an early look at New Features in OpenOffice.org 3.1, due to be released in two months.
True to its practice of frequent releases, OOo 3.1 will follow OOo 3.0 by six months (with the bugfix release 3.0.1 midway in-between).
Lots of visual improvements are included in this release, including antialiasing in drawings, solid dragging of graphical elements, and translucent selections in Writer (like 3.0 introduced in Calc). Some other notable feature improvements include replying to notes in Writer, better integration of grammar checking through the LanguageTool extension, right-to-left (RTL) text improvements for Arabic and Hebrew users, and hundreds of bug fixes.
It looks like another excellent release!
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice.org 3.1 Tour
January 21st, 2009 Benjamin Horst
Mail merge can be a hassle, and is usually an adjustment for new OOo users. I’ve collected a list of articles on performing a mail merge with OpenOffice before, but a new one’s just been published that bears review.
For the Worldlabel.com blog, Solveig Haugland writes Mail Merge in OpenOffice.org: Everything You Need to Know.
If you don’t know what exactly a mail merge is, Haugland explains:
A mail merge is a way to take a letter you’ve written and send it to a whole bunch of people, personalizing it with information about them so they might think that you typed that letter personally for them. A mail merge can also be a quick way to take a list of people’s mailing addresses and generate labels or envelopes with the address for a different person on each label or envelope. In short, it’s a way to be personal, yet efficient. It’s essential for any person or organization that has a lot of clients, partners, parents and children, or other people to communicate with.
Because there are many details and possible custom options you may want to experiment with, it’s a long article. Fortunately, numerous screenshots and a good organization of the content keep it clear and readable.
Posted in How-to, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Mail Merge in OpenOffice.org
January 20th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
If you’re wondering about the number of extensions currently available for OpenOffice, look no further than the Content Statistics page of the Extensions Repository.
As of this writing, that number is 270.
The name and basic description of each is available from the above page as well as the overall count.
Posted in Extensions, Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice.org Extension Count
January 16th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
Open source saves Malaysia… money!
Colin Charles discusses the issue in his post “Open Source Saves Malaysian Government RM40 Million.”
(That’s $12 million US, a pretty impressive amount coming from software license fees.)
Charles’ source is the Open Malaysia Blog, whose original article I cannot access at the moment.
Fortunately, Charles provides the following informative quotes:
Savings on licensing fee alone by adopting OpenOffice.org have already exceeded RM12 million, which is based on the total installed seats of 12,760 at public sector agencies.
And:
The top three applications being considered by most Public Sector Agencies are:
1. OpenOffice.org – Office Suite
2. Firefox – Web Browser
3. MySQL – Database using Open Source Technology
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Open Source Saves Malaysia…