Knowledge of MS Office is a graduation requirement?

[Iandefor]

At least in Washington State public high schools, apparently. I went to register at one this morning, after having spent 3 years at a private high school. I was more than a little annoyed when I was informed I'd be needing to take a "Tech Connections" class that teaches all about how to use Office in order to graduate. I told my advisor I knew how to use it well enought for any applications I would be likely to encounter, thank you very much, at which point she told me that it would probably be easier to just take the class instead of challenging it.

I understand the rationale and that it'll probably be useful to know at some point, but still... I'm going to spend a semester learning how to use a proprietary product whose format locks me in to using Microsoft's products :(.

When my advisor found out I used Linux she encouraged me to "broaden my horizons a little and use Windows." :rolleyes:

Ah, the fine American education system!

[aysiu]

I told my advisor I knew how to use it well enought for any applications I would be likely to encounter, thank you very much, at which point she told me that it would probably be easier to just take the class instead of challenging it. That's when you say, "Yes, but I'm not looking for the easy way. I'd prefer to challenge it." Perhaps you could offer to teach your own class on OpenOffice?

When I was a freshman in college, everyone in our psych class was supposed to take part in an experiment (be subjects), and I told my professor I did not want to do so on principle, so he asked me to write a five-page paper on why I'm opting out--that's what I did.

(Speaking as a former teacher myself), I've generally seen that educators are well-intentioned... and sometimes wrong. If you show some conviction coupled with politeness, they will often see the error of their ways, or at the very least allow you to pursue an alternative equally educational path.

[benplaut]

my school used to require knowledge of MS Office, but i finally settled with them --

doesn't matter how you do it, but you're given assignments to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with certain formats.

Doesn't matter how you do it, but you have to end up with a PDF with perfect formatting. It's not too hard when you know both OpenOffice Calc and Impress, and have a solid knowledge of LaTeX.

[akniss]

I will be teachin a college freshman level course this fall on basic computer skills. The previous instructor focused solely on Windows and MS Office. I have rewritten the course to not only teach the Windows and MS Office Section, but also a Linux and OpenOffice section. I'm actually excited about showing students how easily things learned in MS Word transfer over to a separate office suite, one that they can download and install on their home computer for free. And that's when I'll tell them about Linux (demonstrating with my Ubuntu laptop).

[Skia_42]

Having a class like that is the produst of standards, it is practically impossible to avoid computers now a days and schools need to make sure that students are proficient in all areas including computer technology. Since the vast majority of computer users (95% ?) use Microsoft office, requiring them in the benchmarks is a no brainer. I personally hate standardization and think it is a waste of time but I can see it from their perspective. In the High School that I go to I was able to bypass a required computer tech class by talking to the teacher and arranging a time to take the final to prove my pre-existing computer competence. Talk to you tech guy and ask what you need to do to prove that you are proficient in computers. (It will probably be a really simple test)

[Iandefor]

That's when you say, "Yes, but I'm not looking for the easy way. I'd prefer to challenge it." Perhaps you could offer to teach your own class on OpenOffice?

When I was a freshman in college, everyone in our psych class was supposed to take part in an experiment (be subjects), and I told my professor I did not want to do so on principle, so he asked me to write a five-page paper on why I'm opting out--that's what I did.

(Speaking as a former teacher myself), I've generally seen that educators are well-intentioned... and sometimes wrong. If you show some conviction coupled with politeness, they will often see the error of their ways, or at the very least allow you to pursue an alternative equally educational path. Thanks for the advice, but, honestly, I don't care much beyond the fact that by taking this class, I'm indirectly supporting lock-in to Microsoft products. It's a credit and it isn't worth the effort to me to challenge it.
my school used to require knowledge of MS Office, but i finally settled with them --

doesn't matter how you do it, but you're given assignments to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with certain formats.

Doesn't matter how you do it, but you have to end up with a PDF with perfect formatting. It's not too hard when you know both OpenOffice Calc and Impress, and have a solid knowledge of LaTeX. Interesting.
Having a class like that is the produst of standards, it is practically impossible to avoid computers now a days and schools need to make sure that students are proficient in all areas including computer technology. Since the vast majority of computer users (95% ?) use Microsoft office, requiring them in the benchmarks is a no brainer. I personally hate standardization and think it is a waste of time but I can see it from their perspective. In the High School that I go to I was able to bypass a required computer tech class by talking to the teacher and arranging a time to take the final to prove my pre-existing computer competence. Talk to you tech guy and ask what you need to do to prove that you are proficient in computers. (It will probably be a really simple test) It strikes me to be a better use of time to cover document formatting, not just how to do something in Office.

[slimdog360]

When my advisor found out I used Linux she encouraged me to "broaden my horizons a little and use Windows." :rolleyes:

Ah, the fine American education system!

I needed that laugh, you should have that as your sig.

[Weav]

In my Freshman Engineering class, we have a whole section on learning how to do spreadsheets and other features with Excel. While I understand Excel is the dominant spreadsheet application in a way it makes me feel like I'm supporting Windows and MS by using Excel.

Is there some way to compromise?

[atrus123]

Come to my current state of Indiana.

We're putting Linux labs in a large portion of our schools. The number should be up to 80 schools in '07. If that's successful, it wouldn't surprise me to see it appear in even more schools.

It is probably good that schools have a course which requires students to learn some form of Office, even if it is Microsoft's, but if they give you any option at all to test out, I'd test out.

[gruvsyco]

For whatever it's worth... a lot of what you learn in MSOffice can be directly transferred to OpenOffice. My roommate thought he was using Excel when he tried putting some formulas into OOCalc.

[Iandefor]

I needed that laugh, you should have that as your sig. Indirectly done! I just put a post about it in my blog, a link to which may be found directly underneath the Edward Abbey quote. </shameless plug>

[Dr. Nick]

I took the ms office course in high school then again in college, Its funny because my college has open office and firefox installed on the computers we were using, so obviously someone has a clue whats going on. they had 2 vers of office aswell (2003/Xp). I think most schools use MS Office over Oo0 because even though Oo is free the school gets a massive discount on MS Office.

While I am a student I can get office for $10, I prefer Oo though.

Needless to say I got a A in the class

[prizrak]

I had to take an Office class in college but in HS while it was required I substituted it with a programming course. Sure it was Visual Basic but it got me started :) See if your school would do that, even if it's something like VB it's still a valuable skill.

I did have to take a typing class but that was on some old DOS word processor and was mostly meant to teach you how to type fast. Of course thanks to AIM I skipped about half of the class then came in and did all the work from the half I skipped in about a week :)

[bruce89]

And you wondered how MS got its monopoly...

[Brunellus]

That's when you say, "Yes, but I'm not looking for the easy way. I'd prefer to challenge it." Perhaps you could offer to teach your own class on OpenOffice?

When I was a freshman in college, everyone in our psych class was supposed to take part in an experiment (be subjects), and I told my professor I did not want to do so on principle, so he asked me to write a five-page paper on why I'm opting out--that's what I did.

(Speaking as a former teacher myself), I've generally seen that educators are well-intentioned... and sometimes wrong. If you show some conviction coupled with politeness, they will often see the error of their ways, or at the very least allow you to pursue an alternative equally educational path.
aysiu--this sort of thing is usually mandated by people further up the bureaucracy than teachers.

There's a well-founded principle here: that students should be able to work with what exists in the workplace. That workplace is Microsoft-dominated.

Let's face it: teaching people how to use computers is frustrating, difficult, and expects too much effort on the part of both teachers and students. It is easier and cheaper to mandate "click here, do this" TRAINING rather than "this is function(x) and this is what it does" TEACHING.

Would I prefer things be done differently? certainly. But it is actually easier to take the class than to fight it. Being denied graduation merely because of a trivial training requirement is stupid. Faith and morals are not at stake; it's only software.

Besides, high school students have zero standing, politically, to determine their own curricula, as most of them aren't of the age of majority and thus not voters (even if some might be taxpayers, depending). Take your licks, file a protest, pass the course, and organize for change where it really matters--in the school board, municipal government, and state house.

[Blondie]

Here in Europe the ECDL (http://www.ecdl.com) and advanced ECDL, now becoming the most popular qualifications of their kind, can be taken either on Microsoft Office or on OpenOffice / StarOffice. Whichever route you take, the qualifications are officially considered entirely equivalent and transferable. They're not different qualifications, you get the exact same certificate, the same qualification title etc. whichever software you used to complete the same tasks set down in the exams, within the given time limit.

IMO this is the way to go. After all, the differences between MS Office and OpenOffice are scarcely larger than the differences between different versions of MS Office.

[aysiu]

aysiu--this sort of thing is usually mandated by people further up the bureaucracy than teachers. If it's mandated by the government, the teacher and student will have no recourse, naturally. But if it's a decision by the department head or even the school board, there's usually a way around it.

[Iandefor]

If it's mandated by the government, the teacher and student will have no recourse, naturally. But if it's a decision by the department head or even the school board, there's usually a way around it. I believe that it's a state graduation requirement.

[aysiu]

I believe that it's a state graduation requirement.
Doh!

[Brunellus]

I believe that it's a state graduation requirement.
thus my post applies: take the class, file a protest. pass the class, organize for change.

When faith and morals are at stake, resist. But pick your fights.

[Dr. Nick]

Just look at is as a way to pad your GPA before graduation :) 8)

In HS I took the office course and C++ and got A's in both

In university I have taken

VB.NET
the same office course as in hs with a newer ver of office
and Management Information Systems

I bet you cant guess my grades in them courses....... All A's :mrgreen:

I would follow the advice to just take the course and make your displeasure known to whoever may have a impact, If nothing happens then you atleast know you tried.

[peabody]

What bothers me about this situation is that it is mandated. It's fine if the only technology the school has to offer is Microsoft technology as that may be related to funds or perhaps even a donation from something like the Bill and Melinda gates foundation. But requiring this is essentially an endorsement of Microsoft technology by the school board. It's within their rights to do that, but I think it's a terrible decision. Perhaps we should start a letter campaign to the school to see if we could get them to offer a free software alternative along side it.

[Dr. Nick]

I would atleast mention it in class if the situation ever comes up, In my HS all the people taking networking classes got to use Suse, but those in the other computer classes couldnt touch it. In a few of my classes the teacher has brought up open source on occasion. What I did was do all my reports over a open source application, If you have any projects realted to computers in the class throw Linux or Oo into the presentation on the chance that a classmate may follow through.

I added a "Made by NVU" button onto the website that I designed when all our instruction on web page building was based on Front Page

A letter isnt a bad idea if you have means to get it to the people who can make the change, May write your local representive or to the state govt reps if you are in the US. It may not do much, but sometimes it can help just to get it out thier and off your chest.

[wana10]

i just left washington states high school system...and i never took an office course, i've even got my diploma and everything...sucker;)
i don't know what they're trying to pull but the only requirements state wide are the wasl for the 2008 class. that means that its probably either a school or a district thing and it shouldn't be too hard to test out of it. on the other hand...usually the teachers i've seen teaching the office-tech classes are...not the brightest shall we say, and if you get the opportunity run cmd.exe full screen on the instructer pc and see if they flounder.:p

[OffHand]

At least in Washington State public high schools, apparently. I went to register at one this morning, after having spent 3 years at a private high school. I was more than a little annoyed when I was informed I'd be needing to take a "Tech Connections" class that teaches all about how to use Office in order to graduate. I told my advisor I knew how to use it well enought for any applications I would be likely to encounter, thank you very much, at which point she told me that it would probably be easier to just take the class instead of challenging it.

I understand the rationale and that it'll probably be useful to know at some point, but still... I'm going to spend a semester learning how to use a proprietary product whose format locks me in to using Microsoft's products :(.Most companies still use MS Office so it def will be useful.


When my advisor found out I used Linux she encouraged me to "broaden my horizons a little and use Windows." :rolleyes:
LOL, freaking hilarious :D

[Soarer]

Just came across this quotation on Adler's site (www.jjmacey.net)

“Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”
Malcolm Forbes (1919 - 1990)

Doesn't say anything about fitting people out to be wage slaves :)

[vladozan]

The High school sylabus in my country is set by department of education and only certain percentage of it is left for a teacher's creativity. I remember having two teachers teaching me informatics. During the era of the first one we had installed Mandrake and Windows on our computers. However we never really used open-source (because the lack of time) we were informed that it does exist and actually saw how it works. The second one did not know how to do around linux so he did not used it at all not even open office nor encouraged using it.

Another side of this problem is that schools gets computers from state with preinstalled MS Windows and they should not change the basic system configuration for some time.

[Brunellus]

Just came across this quotation on Adler's site (www.jjmacey.net)

“Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”
Malcolm Forbes (1919 - 1990)

Doesn't say anything about fitting people out to be wage slaves :)
Education is one thing; training is another. Most "education" is really "training," because few people have the inclination to be "educated."

[argie]

When my advisor found out I used Linux she encouraged me to "broaden my horizons a little and use Windows." :rolleyes:

Hilarious!

I didn't know this was common elsewhere too. I thought it was a characteristic of assembly-line "education" where I live.

[PapaWiskas]

I would contact some local TV stations, show them what you can do on a laptop or desktop in Linux, and pose the question of why does the school system mandate this.

As much as I do not like them, the ACLU could also be contacted.

In my opinion this is worth the fight, and worth the time. People, most people, dont know there is a choice.

Taking Microsoft classes in order to graduate....BAH!!!! THE NERVE!!!:-x :-x

[bruce89]

My Computing Advanced Higher book mentions Linux. Not entirely flattering, it is in the section about the CLI.
It also says it is a viable alternative, and has more than one GUI.

[Iandefor]

i just left washington states high school system...and i never took an office course, i've even got my diploma and everything...sucker;)
i don't know what they're trying to pull but the only requirements state wide are the wasl for the 2008 class. that means that its probably either a school or a district thing and it shouldn't be too hard to test out of it. on the other hand...usually the teachers i've seen teaching the office-tech classes are...not the brightest shall we say, and if you get the opportunity run cmd.exe full screen on the instructer pc and see if they flounder.:p Then I've allowed myself to be taken for a fool. Damn!


LOL, freaking hilarious :D I must admit, it was a little hard not to laugh in her face when she said that :).


I would contact some local TV stations, show them what you can do on a laptop or desktop in Linux, and pose the question of why does the school system mandate this.

As much as I do not like them, the ACLU could also be contacted.

In my opinion this is worth the fight, and worth the time. People, most people, dont know there is a choice.

Taking Microsoft classes in order to graduate....BAH!!!! THE NERVE!!!:-x :-x I wouldn't particularly call it a civil-rights issue. Just braindead policy.

[bruce89]

It could be a conspiracy, as MS give lots of discounts to educational institutions, so mabye they have to do something in return.

[BWF89]

What's the big deal? Most of what you learn in MS Office can be directly transferred to OpenOffice and most of what you learn in OpenOffice can be directly transferred to MS Office.

Just take the class and if you hear some of the students asking how they can get a copy MS Office for home but they don't want to pay that much walk up to them and tell them about OpenOffice. You'll pass high school and get more people to stop useing outrageously overpriced software.

[M7S]

When I was a freshman in the University, I had to take a computer class where Microsoft Office was the Office Suite used. The next year I had to take another computer class which agian concentrated on Microsoft applications. I was fed up with this by now and when we got an assignment to make an homepage (we had been taught how to use frontpage, of cource) I made one about what I had done differently if I had been teaching the cource. That paid of. A couple of months later the teacher of that cource recommended me for a short time job as a computer teacher for seniors (is that the correct english word for older people, 60+ age?).

This year I will hold that first computer course for the freshmens (the same teacher recommended me). As I have quite free hands I will use OpenOffice instead of MS Office. It's not worth teaching Office 2003 anyway when 2007 will have an completly new UI. In the test the students are allowed to use whatever program they want, as long as the files they mail me is in an approved ISO standards format. :cool: Did I mention that these students will become teachers when they graduate? If only a fraction of these nearly houndred students sticks with OpenOffice and uses it in their own education that will make a difference. I will of cource demonstrate Edubuntu as well. The question is if I had gotten the change to do any of this if I hadn't made that homepage. Sometimes its worth complaining.

I'm sorry for my bad english. I blame the late hour. It's a shame that I can't get the english educational vocabulary right when I'm soon a graduated teacher myself.

[Yossarian]

Originally posted by M7S
When I was a freshman in the University, I had to take a computer class where Microsoft Office was the Office Suite used. The next year I had to take another computer class which agian concentrated on Microsoft applications. I was fed up with this by now and when we got an assignment to make an homepage (we had been taught how to use frontpage, of cource) I made one about what I had done differently if I had been teaching the cource. That paid of. A couple of months later the teacher of that cource recommended me for a short time job as a computer teacher for seniors (is that the correct english word for older people, 60+ age?).

This year I will hold that first computer course for the freshmens (the same teacher recommended me). As I have quite free hands I will use OpenOffice instead of MS Office. It's not worth teaching Office 2003 anyway when 2007 will have an completly new UI. In the test the students are allowed to use whatever program they want, as long as the files they mail me is in an approved ISO standards format. Did I mention that these students will become teachers when they graduate? If only a fraction of these nearly houndred students sticks with OpenOffice and uses it in their own education that will make a difference. I will of cource demonstrate Edubuntu as well. The question is if I had gotten the change to do any of this if I hadn't made that homepage. Sometimes its worth complaining.

I'm sorry for my bad english. I blame the late hour. It's a shame that I can't get the english educational vocabulary right when I'm soon a graduated teacher myself.


Your english is fine. Senior is the right word, but some 60 year olds might take offense at being called seniors. That's an issue of tact, not language.

OT, I'm not really feeling the outrage here.

You learn with the tools they provide. Good luck getting them to ditch MS Office.