Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Notes on Completing Surveys/Forms
Thank you for contributing!
You will find 17 different chapters we're trying to build. We want to use your input and our author's own perspectives.
The basic format of each chapter is going to be (red identifies areas of requested input);
• Chapter Title
• Chapter Definition
• Author Name and Background
• National/International Trends
• State of State in Arizona
• SWOT: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats
• Predictions
• Author Position
• Contributors
It is advisable that you type up your content using a text/word processor, then copy and paste into the blog. The blog's scroll box doesn't work as well as we would like.
If you have any specific graphics, photos, audio, video, please submit directly to the chapter author.
Here's to all us putting together something useful and thanks again.
See you October 1st, 2009 at the AZ CTO/CIO Forum.
Relevant Links
Posts
Blog Archive
-
►
2009
(17)
- ► 06/28 - 07/05 (1)
- ► 06/14 - 06/21 (16)
Labels
- Broadcasts (1)
- Digital Content (1)
- IAW Interactive White Boards (1)
- Innovations (1)
- Open Source (1)
- PD (1)
6 comments:
PVUSD is removing all Microsoft Office apps by March, 2009 (students and employees - well, actually, we're leaving it on Business Services). Getting tired of paying the money, when we've got pvLearners (Google for all employees and students for free) and Open Office v 3.0 is sweet....I'll let you all know how it goes, but no, I don't know of any large scale deployments, but I haven't "Google'd" it yet either.
As a follow up to my own comment:
PC Magazine (October 10, 200) simply states:
For governments and corporations that don't want to be dependent on Microsoft's formats and don't want to continue paying Microsoft's prices, OpenOffice.org 3.0 is a serious contender.
(http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2332504,00.asp)
I've been using it for more than a year and it actually has many features you can't get with MS Office. With the release of version 3.x, PDF support and native OSX, is really sweet. I've been watching the K12 space and it's starting in some other states - swithcing. Between Open Office 3.x and Google Apps, we're cutting the cost and aggravation by switching. From $250,000 a year in M&O subscription licensing to a $50,000 one time capital cost, and then all others with Open Office and Google.
For about 4 years we ran Open Office in AJUSD, both staff and students. When we first implemented the program it was called StarOffice and even had an e-mail client that we ran. It was very difficult at first with pushback from staff members, but after awhile, most were ok with the suite (kids didn't really ever mind as they like change:-). The program evolved into Open Office and the program made many great changes. We switched back to Microsoft Office about 3 years ago for a number of reasons that I won't go into here(we still have the Open Office suite loaded on all computers in the district) I will say that we, meaning tech department, are looking again at going back to Open Office or Google apps for students and teachers(DO level departments would stay Microsoft). With budgets quickly shrinking, this is a good place to save and we know what it takes to make such a shift.
With the economy going down hill fast....Change or Die. Grow deeper roots and get more resourceful when the drought comes. I never understood this, but their seems to be tough to convince people to switch from MS Office. Most people believe that they cannot communicate with the rest of the world without it. I personally use iWorks.
Jon, I really appreciate you sharing. We're about 85% Mac so it wasn't until version 3.x came out with native support that we seriously considered it. I anticipated DO departments being the more resistant, but as John notes, time to dig deeper, and the timing sounds right for us.
Any particular do's or don'ts you care to share on the actual shift?
Update - buying the MS Office instead of subscribing and also begin to deploy Open Office. Getting closer but not yet ready for cold turkey and will take some more time.
Post a Comment