Open Office for Schools

I came across a blog post by Nate Grondin about Open Office and wanted to support Nate and other teachers and educators.

Open Office is a great alternative to the proprietary programs we use - whether a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation generator or even a drawing tool - they're all there in the pack.



The first noticeable advantage is the price - it's free! yes, absolutely free. The second advantage is that it is Open Source, which means that it is in constant evolution to become better than before*.

Like with everything that is free, you make some compromises. I.e. knowing that it'll take some time to get used to the new GUI, and perhaps some of the smaller functions may not be ripe yet. But for most work that needs to be done the Open Office provides a great alternative to the proprietary office software that's out there.

If you're wondering what you can do now about this, whether it's for saving a few bucks for your school, or just to educate your self, why not start with something real basic - download the Open Office and start getting acquainted with the GUI and all the menu layouts. That way, you can get a taste and feel of how Open Office works. You'd be surprised how some things are very similar, other very intuitive. Some of the things you'll learn will be new to you, but that's all part of life - to learn.

Open Office is a good alternative, in my view. It provides you with most if not all of your needs. And now is a good a time as any to start familiarizing yourself with it.

This recommendation is of course spoken from experience - I've downloaded it and even installed it for my dad.

* Open Source is a very wide topic with many advantages (and some disadvantages) for the end user. However, since writing about Open Source can be very lengthy and stretch into a book or two, if you don't know what it is and want to learn more, I suggest reading more about it. You can even see my previous posts on Open Source on my blog.