In recent days, school information technology people in Vermont have had an active discussion about open source productivity suites. The discussion has focused on the transition from the most popular commercial productivity suite (Microsoft Office) the the popular open source productivity suite (OpenOffice).

For those unfamiliar with the issue: Purchasing licenses for Microsoft Office (or any other commercial word processor/ spreadsheet/ presentation package can be expensive… think hundreds of dollars per computer. As a result, many schools are installing OpenOffice; saving thousands of dollars, but providing an unfamiliar interface for computer users.

In this blog, I have taken a decidedly pro-open source stand… that continues in this post!

The reasons for not moving to open source productivity suites are usually these:

1)“Teachers are unfamiliar with the software.” Sorry, but this is just an excuse… anyone who really knows how to use Word can figure out how to use almost all features in OpenOffice Writer in minutes. (Check many common tasks… many require the same steps and same commands in Writer and Word.)

2)“We need to use the ‘industry standard’ software.” If you are teaching high school or vocational school students, then “yes,” but everyone else “no.” If students leave our middle schools without the ability to use simple controls in any word processor (and without the ability to mess about to figure out what isn’t obvious) then shame on us.

3)“But everyone else uses Word.” But that doesn’t mean we cannot open files created in by those who use Word. Find a Word document, launch OpenOffice, use the menu commands (or toolbar icons or keyboard shortcuts that are familiar in Word) to open the Word document. OpenOffice will translate the Word documents. Microsoft recently updated Microsoft Office so that it can no longer open documents created using older versions of Word. Got old documents? You may need OpenOffice!

4)“But the textbooks are all written for Microsoft Office.” Sure textbooks can be fine references, but do we really need a textbook to tell us how to use software? Even if we do use textbooks to help us remember all of the features available in software, can’t we use that as a guide and learn how to perform the operations in any productivity suite?

Here are some reasons to seriously look at open source:

1)Your students can have the same software at home as they have at school… legally and without cost. When we adopt a productivity suite in school and make it the standard for academic work, aren’t we in essence endorsing that software and recommending (strongly recommending) families who want to support students at home purchase that software? By supporting students to become consumers of open source software, we are taking an important step in reducing the digital divide.

2)Look at your school budget… can you really justify spending thousands of dollars when a comparable product is available for free?
3)Support really is available… take a few minutes… do a search for OpenOffice… follow a link or two and see if you don’t find pragmatic advice from users of the software. It has been my (admittedly biased) experience that users familiar with the open source support sites can find answers (that really work!) as quickly as they can be found on the commercial sites.

I am interested in readers’ experiences with open source productivity suites… please comment.