many things change we all have seen the rapid change in software, I only have to look at microsofts string of office packages:
office 2000
office XP (2002)
office 2003
office 2007
They change regularly to provide better support for new OSes and also to provide income.
We can not ethically teach our students something that we know will be obsolete by the time they leave us. Why should we focus on teaching the students to use a product.
Essentially what we must teach them are the Portable standards that we can apply to any package whether it is a typewriter, Microsoft office suite, word perfect, Google docs, Zoho documents, staroffice or open office. They consistent standards are the bread and butter of these principles. They things like:
-consistency and repetition
-left to right flow
-Footers and headers
-readability and legibility
-suitability for the audience
-suitability for the purpose
-use of font styles, families, size, weight and types
-use of text enhancements – underline, reverse text, drop caps, pulled quotes
-appropriate use of colour
-appropriate use of whitespace
-text-image balance
-conventions for purpose – i.e. letter layout, papagraph structure

These are standards that apply across the board.

Does this mean that all products are the same, are dull and boring?

No – a good product, and we are talking about a end product, has to suit the purpose and its audience each of these factors will be different depending on the target audience and the intended purpose.

This is what I mean by principles of word processing and these apply to any package, they are product independent.

Cheers

A

I think it is possible that some basic principles have been impacted by computer word processing. This makes the task of redefining principles of word processing a distinct task from word processing (writing down stuff) in general.
oooo-la-la,
B-ob

Good content will always be good, but bad content is rubbish that can’t be saved by an hour choosing fonts and borders.

There are of course, many ways to present things better than Gdocs, and they can be free too. But Gdocs is brilliant for all the things we only THOUGHT mattered so much about MS Word and the like.

Toni, people just manage what they know at the time and for some it took such a long time to climb up there, only to find they were on the wrong ladder all the time. When you were teaching content and context perhaps they were teaching “click this menu, choose that option, then type…….”
.. In which case a change in software is daunting…. and perhaps EXACTLY what’s needed. But it’ll hurt. You did well to walk away, but if you could have your time again, how could you have opened that person’s possibility for change? Perhaps as twitter users who are confident and competent in the technology and change, we should consider our role in helping make that change for others. In those conversations we could be opening little doors, little windows. Then standing back to see who pops through for a look on the other side.

I do mean it seriously that I think many of the products and I can single out the the Microsoft Office suite for one and Adobe’s Photoshop for another are brilliant tools, well made, well considered premium tools.

But when schools have to have cake stalls, galas and fairs to fund classroom resources, and we are buying premium tools when equally powerful (and in some cases more powerful) ones like open office, staroffice, neo-office and the GIMP are available for free or free to educations (staroffice) are the millions being miss spent?

We have blinkers on that, just like on the race horse, limit our vision to the track and nothing else. Outside of the track is a vast array of opportunities. Some are not good ones but, some like open office, its commercial (but free to education) big brother star office or for Mac – Neo Office – provide a greatly reduced Total cost of ownership. Training should not be limited to those tools on the track. Its a little bit like limiting the books in a library.

Worth considering perhaps. Thank Toni andScott

So… I was at a meeting recently… where the man who does the deals between Microsoft and the MoE spoke… He spoke about the way that the Ministry is looking to consider other alternatives to Microsoft – so cautioned everyone about going to ‘the cloud’. He talked about how if the Ministry chose not to fund Microsoft products, then Microsoft would have to approach schools individually and schools would end up paying more for Microsoft products…

YAY! I thought – I don’t use microsoft anyway.

So chit chatting with teachers afterwards and one lady says to me. Wouldn’t it be terrible if the Ministry stopped funding Microsoft? To which I replied – not that would be fantastic I don’t use it anyway and think of all the ways you could spend that extra money.

She told me she thought that it was terrible and that because I didn’t want it it would cost schools like hers more.

I said to her well there are a lot more options than just Microsoft and ‘the cloud’ and started to list… but she interrupted and said….

Don’t you think our teachers have gone through enough having to learn one system and then expecting them to change is just too much.

I did the only thing I could bring myself to do. I walked away.

Thanks for giving me a place to share my story. I will move on from it now!