| Renato Lukač - Gimnazija
Murska Sobota |
| In Slovenian high
schools IT takes place in the first class as a
compulsory subject. The main emphasis is given to the effective usage
of office suite software, i.e. word processor, spreadsheet,
presentation tool and drawing tool. Students are trained to use each
tool separately and they are also evaluated about their achieved
skills. However, at the end of the year each student has to prepare and
submit a comprehensive project in which all the winning skills are
presented and marked by teachers. There was a project OKO, in which Slovenian government was trying to introduce open source software to the schools. Unfortunately, the project was stopped even before it full started. Therefore, we have only a few schools where enthusiastic teachers are doing their best and trying to introduce new alternative model for IT. At Gimnazija Murska Sobota we have been successfully teaching IT in recent years only on open source software. We have been using Slovenian distribution Pingo, which is GNU/Linux operating system. OpenOffice.org suite has been used as a major application. Support to native language, availability for multiple platforms and free of charge licence are the main advantages of OpenOffice.org in comparison to the competitive products. Moreover, the functional similarity to other tools and friendly interface made OpenOffice.org to our choice. We prepared on-line training materials and we evaluated every year opinion of our students. It was proved that our decision was correct. OpenOffice.org fulfils all requirements of contemporary curriculum. Targeted audience: teachers, training staff |
| Biography: Renato Lukač
took his degree in physics in 1992
(University of Ljubljana) and his
PhD in computer simulation of
liquid crystals at the
molecular level in January 2000
(University of Vienna),
whereupon he went to University of
Warwick, Great Britain. He worked for two years
as a post-doctoral
research fellow at the Chemistry Department. He has
been teaching
physics and information science at
Gimnazija Murska Sobota for
eleven years. His speciality is
introduction of open source
software to curriculum in high schools. Since spring
2003 he is
director of Spark, Institute for Research and
Development, Beltinci,
which main activity is related to open
source software. |
Introducing Open Source Software – including OpenOffice.org – into Slovenian Schools
| Mojca Tomazin - Business School in Brezice |
| The use of Information
and Communication Technology (ICT) is becoming
more and more important in learning environments, and it is usually
very expensive. This causes the global digital divide between the
world’s information-rich and information-deprived which
affects
educational opportunities. So educational systems around the world
should take into consideration Open Source Software (OSS) as well. In the year 2003, Slovenian Ministry of Education has started the 'Open Source Project'. In fact an 'expert group' of enthusiastic teachers was formed and besides other activities we have also started a research about using OSS in education, because any such research in Slovenia hasn't been done in the past. We took similar questionnaires, as had been used in two previous studies - one was made by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory in USA and the other was made in Europe, with a title ‘Free/Libre Open Source Software: Evidence from Germany, Sweden and UK’. In my presentation I will sumarize results of our - Slovenian research that refer to the use of OSS on desktops – especially office suites (including OpenOffice.org). As I teach courses in Business Informatics at the Business School I never miss the opportunity to tell my students about OSS. According to my experience, the best way of introducing OSS - especially in business schools - is to show students OpenOffice.org office suite. I decided to make a mini-research about attitude of my students towards OpenOffice.org and would also like to present the results, which I find to be very interesting. Target audience: teachers, 'decision makers' on education field... |
| Biography: Mojca Tomazin teaches courses in Business Informatics at the Business School in Brezice, Slovenia. Areas of research interest include use of Free/Open Source Software and e-resources in education. |
Lowering barriers to entry in education
| Ian Lynch - Chief
assessor for the INGOTs, IRL Computer Systems Ltd;
OpenOffice.org Lead for Schools. |
| This is a case study of
setting up a sustainable business as a means of
getting OpenOffice.org into the most stubborn school environments.
OpenOffice.org and the community are an education resource through
their own unique social attributes. Schools will install the software
for this reason alone and so there is no head to head contest with
Microsoft Office. There are also spin offs in teaching young people how
to participate in the community, generating resources to support the
community and development of education resources based on
OpenOffice.org. Launched in September 2004 after some initial pilots,
The International
Grades in Office Technology
currently has 50
registered Academies and 125 registered assessors in 10
countries. The
initiative is self-financing and has now taken on a prominent member of
the community providing him with full-time employment in addition to my
own involvement and part-time involvement of other company
members. In
the longer term it is envisaged that the business will grow, providing
employment for OpenOffice.org activists, an income stream for
development, and a vector for proliferation of OpenOffice.org in
education and training. The early development of the project has had
modest financial backing from UK Trade and Industry, The British
Chambers of Commerce and The
Learning Machine as well as
general
support from many members of the community. Income generated has
already been used to support OpenOffice.org, for example, to provide a
presence for OpenOffice.org at the NEA conference in Los Angeles
attended by 15,000 educators. Target audience: Anyone interested in strategies to get OpenOffice.org into schools. Anyone interested in how to set up a sustainable business based on OpenOffice.org. |
| Biography: Ian Lynch has experience working at a senior level in education in the UK. In 1993 he started his own consultancy company and in 1998 IRL Computer Systems Ltd winning the Midlands Region Small Business of the Year Award. He is a committee member of the Association for Free Software, a founder member of Schoolforge UK and as the elected Chair of the Open Source Consortium/SFUK education working group, he is the main contact for the Government funded British Education Communication Technology Agency with the Open Source Community. He is interested in sustainable business development in software related fields that do not depend on paying for software licenses. He has been an active OpenOffice.org community volunteer for several years, providing support on issues related to education. Since January 2005 he has travelled around the world twice and extensively in Europe promoting INGOTs and representing the OpenOffice.org community. Outside the world of technology he is a keen sportsman having represented Great Britain in two World Powerlifting Championships and he still plays rugby during the season despite his advancing years. |
The OpenOffice.org ECDL
| Angelika Goeszler - agami systems integration |
| In Austria the Austrian
Computer Association (OCG) supports also
OpenOffice.org for the ECDL exams since the MQTB 4. This lecture should
give an overview about the problems implementing the MQTB with
OpenOffice.org and StarOffice. It should also give a short instruction
for teachers and trainers how
the exams should be prepared based on the testcenter workshop regularly
held by agami Training. The following questions are mainly focused:
Target audience: teachers, IT trainers, writers of training materials, interested users |
| Biography: Angelika
Goeszler get into the OpenOffice.org project in 2002 when she
started the CD Rom distribution for OpenOffice.org in Austria. Quite
soon she was involved in the German speaking marketing project and
founded one of the first user groups for OpenOffice.org
(www.openoffice.or.at).
Today her company agami systems integration is authorized training
partner for StarOffice and authorized testcenter for the ECDL exam with
open source software. |
