What are we teaching and why?

A couple more public articles have reported on the announcement that Microsoft are no longer providing MS Office for Mac as part of the MS Software for Schools Agreement with the Ministry of Education.

These can be read here and here. Needless to say it has kicked up quite a storm in both the education community and the Tech community.

So here's my spin on it:
How it all worked - as I remember it, was that the government struck a deal with MS to provide a full range of software to schools - this included Visual Studio developer tools, Windows Server, as well as XP, Office, Publisher & Encarta and the like. Also included I think was office 2001 for Macs. The licensing for this was on a year by year basis, we had to fill out all the forms each year. Of course by this stage a lot of Mac schools were running OS X - and so had to pay extra to get the newly released OS X version of Office for Mac (this was free in the second year).

A few months later Apple struck a similar deal and we were all given OS X Panther and iLife for free - all we had to do was apply for it. Of course when Tiger came out we automagically got sent those disks to. (In fact they arrived at school before anybody knew we were actually getting them - just a couple of disks in a brown envelope).

So what has happened now is that the MS deal only includes the software for Windows and the OS X version of office is no longer included in the bundle. But Apple have already extended their offer to include iWork.

This has created quite a stir in the Mac Ed community. With some for and some against the move.

Somebody who I respect greatly (and is an Apple Distinguished Educator to boot) has a great response to it here

The point the original articles seems to miss (and I have argued this for years) is that the computers - and apps for that matter - that we are using today will probably be nothing like the ones children will face in 10-15 years time when they are ready to join the workforce (although Vista SP2 should just about be ready to ship).

We are not teaching children 'how' to use a computer and its programmes - most of them already know that and those that don't, quickly learn. We are trying to teach children to think and use tools that best help them to think. At least at the most basic level that is what we are endeavouring to do.

So access to MS Office isn't a pre-requisite to be able to function in the workplace - but being able to problem solve (ahh maybe that's where it comes in), think creatively, work collaboratively, communicate effectively, use sound reasoning to make decisions - are all attributes a valuable employee should have.

Unfortunately I think there are forces within the MOE that truly believe the world would be better off without Macs. The really funny thing is - if you go to any Education conference that has an ICT focus and the predominant platform is Apple-based. The movers and shakers in NZ education are the Mac based schools and we're going to take a lot to budge.