LibreOffice in a Microsoft Office world

[Juan Pucheu]

Any clever solution to MS office bad support of odt files ? I'm using old doc format by default, but teachers complains that kids files  give problems when opened.
I don't have the bandwith to switch to google docs
Thanks
Juan

[urkomasse]

At my school, I install LibreOffice for Windows on the teacher computers.
That's the best approach to avoid MS Office's problems: don't use it.

But that said, most of our teachers and students are going crazy about Google Docs, so not many .odt files are sent around.

What kind of "problems" are the teachers having? How about students submitting PDFs instead?

[Juan Pucheu]

They like word and excel, it works perfect for them, so using another soft generates resistance. Worse, the file format problems created a "libreoffice sucks" attitude.
It's my fault, i made the change without getting the teachers in the loop, bad planning on my side.

[urkomasse]

I am under the impression that you work in an organization with limited budget.


I think the only approach now is to go up in the hierarchy, and really address it from ideological perspective, with support from administrators above:
- LibreOffice vs Office and the Digital Divide.
- Using LibreOffice and purchasing support from local, South-American companies vs. Microsoft. Sending money to help the U.S. economy vs. the local economy.
- Talk about Munich migration, and there was a recent article about an Italian city hall where the employees chose to migrate to LibreOffice to avoid a salary cut for everyone.
- As a school, as educators, we want to encourage legal software, discourage software piracy, but at the same time, not put a financial burden on our students and their families.


So, let the teachers know that this isn't "change just for the sake of change", but that there are valid arguments about it, and particularly arguments that are very compatible with the goals and philosophy of educators.


I used this at my school:
http://link.ssis.edu.vn/index.php?title=Technology_%40_SSIS/Software/Why_we_use_Free_Software
Based on these links:
http://fsfe.org/freesoftware/education/argumentation.en.html
http://wiki.fsfe.org/Reasons_for_schools_to_use_Free_Software


Good luck!

[Marker]

We faced some challenges in moving staff to LibreOffice from Office. (We now use Google Docs for most everything, so it's not too much of an issue anymore. However, the items below may help some of you who aren't as much on the Google Bandwagon)

One problem was that we were sticking with older, more "stable" versions of LO - based on what I think was bad advice. A lot of problems are fixed in the newer versions, so my (current, at least) recommendation is to get at least the latest 4.1.x versions installed.

Last week I got closer to convincing one staff member that it's a good product. She was trying to create fractions for student math work in Google Docs, but was having trouble because Google shrinks the fraction down to the height of the surrounding letters (font). That made the fraction too small to read. In LibreOffice we created fractions that weren't reduced in size and that's just what she needed. She then made a screencast to let others know how to include fractions in their LO documents. You should be able to view it at this link:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4d7uoM0KglwWk5leGNZN1JkYTQ/edit?usp=sharing

Maybe that'll help someone.