Open Office vs. MS Office in the classroom - a growing debate

Last week I delivered a day-long workshop at SWPRSC on the topic of Technology Integration in the Math and Science classroom. An early question was regarding Open Office vs. MS Office in the classroom.

For those of us unfamiliar with Open Office, it's a product developed by Sun Microsystems that essentially "clones" MS Office, delivering their version of all the applications MS Office does (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) but all for free. It's catching on for multiple reasons (one being obvious!) at many districts, globally, but it's my opinion we should move cautiously and consider it carefully.

The attendee wanted to know how to best address this to her administration and tech. people as she is of the opinion that forgetting about MS Office in the process is harmful. I agreed. She wrote me later for more information and my response is below.

PLEASE respond with your feedback, whether you agree or disagree, here on my blog so everyone in the district can have an opportunity to learn and hopefully get involved in this debate. Again, I'd like to see a robust discussion ensue over Technology Integration, district-wide, but let's keep it open (like Open Source products such as OOffice, not so ironically)!

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Thanks for writing. I know my opinion is not popular with everyone. But I’ve come to my opinion carefully and with a lot of experience; too often people form a reactionary opinion and this is not beneficial to our students. A few points to consider are:

The overwhelming majority of businesses and universities still use MS Office. Most district technology plans state the district is striving to enable the student to perform well in current and emerging environments. We should not forget the current. MS Office is the current. If that changes, great, but until that time we should use it as the basis.

The graphical user interface is different as well as enough other aspects that Open Office has yet to clone. For example, OOffice is not compatible with MS Office 2007.

To put all your eggs in one basket, such as OOffice, is a risk not worth taking. Many former free Office clones have come and gone. Some might argue this one’s here to stay, but again, until it does and becomes the industry standard, ignoring MS Office is actually reckless.

Another concern I have is the viability of Web 2.0 in this arena. As you also know, I’m a big proponent of Web 2.0. Google Docs *might* just as well eclipse MS Office in the future as well as OOffice. That honestly would be great, for students, teachers, businesses and everyone else, if it did. But we don’t know, so we need to apply a conservative approach while being sure to offer those emerging technologies as alternatives.

Now, to be fair, I completely understand and actually agree with those who argue for OOffice, as you might have noticed I did in our workshop. I happen to have OOffice loaded on two computers at home and frequently suggest it for my web design clients due to their budget issues, etc. But my uses and those of my clients vary greatly and again, nobody’s being locked into one application; it’s a matter of choice. We need to give that choice *to* our students.

Also, as you know, I push any Open Source solution. But again, we’re teachers and we can make that choice because we *have* learned MS Office and have those skills when required by our employers.

I too agree that we should be teaching principles/concepts. Just look at the technology standards. They do not mention products, just tasks. So teaching MS Office with OOffice not only helps students master the standards but gives them a real-world edge in knowing there are multiple ways to solve a problem. And again, when or if that paradigm shift comes and the majority of businesses are using OOffice, our students will be far ahead of the learning curve.

Finally, I completely understand why people are *against* MS Office and too have my own stories of woe, but as I said, we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

My first year as a technology teacher was at a parochial school back in Chicagoland. I came into a K-8 school where the previous teacher was using Notepad as a word processor. But we could not afford the MS Office licensing. So I taught MS Works, as it was loaded on the machines already, as well as WordPad AND Notepad to boot. Some of my kids came back to visit me when they were finally challenged with Word and Office in high school and told me they had no problems converting. But it’s the robustness of the previous instruction that put them in the position.

So I would not argue against OOffice or any Open Source or Web 2.0 application. I would argue to keep status quo, being sure to offer alternatives. And as I said in the workshop, if there are two candidates for a job which requires proficiency of MS Office and one has it while the other does not, ask yourself whom will get the job offer.

I could be wrong but I would rather err on the side of caution when it comes to my students.

A quick google of the topic found these excellent resources. Please keep in mind they’re only opinions, like mine. Be sure to read comments – they go both ways:

http://teachers20.com/2008/05/05/open-office-vs-ms-office-in-a-public-school-setting/

http://nategrondin.com/2007/03/31/schools-should-use-openofficeorg/

http://community.k12opensource.com/forum/topics/transitioning-to-open-office

http://www.computerworlduk.com/TOOLBOX/OPEN-SOURCE/blogs/index.cfm?blogid=14&entryid=1423

Hope this helps.

Jerry