[ILUG] how to really help opensource

[Alan Horkan]

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 olearypj at rte.ie wrote:

> Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 17:24:21 +0100
> From: olearypj at rte.ie
> To: ilug at linux.ie
> Subject: Re: [ILUG] how to really help opensource
>
> Quoting John Moylan <johnm at rte.ie>:
>
> > Erm, have you tried OO with a datasource and autopilot yet? It is a
> > viable MSAccess alternative.
> >
> > John
>
> Hi folks,
>          I've always looked on the ECDL as just a fancy name for a MS Office
> course, I've seen the study material & how you could call it a computer course
> is beyond me.

The ECDL has tried to be agnostic at least in theory, even if that falls
down in practice due to the overwhelming monopoly of Microsoft Office.

The ECDL is not aimed at the kind of people that would subscribe to this
list but it seems about the same as the City and Guilds course I took
while (otherwise bored out of my mind) in Transition Year and there is
certainly a market for this level of learning.

We may think of literacy as requiring the ability to write as well as read
(programming as well as running software) but the general public do not
yet see computer literacy that way.  To be fair if users can get any good
at putting together complicated spreadsheet calculations or maybe even
script an office task they are well on their way to learning to program.

> Why not consider the LPI exams, Griffin Software in Tallaght run
> a good Linux course to prepare you for the LPI Exams. I agree John, I run
> Staroffice & MySQL as a data source as an alternative to Access, no problems.

For ILUG members LPI would seem to be a much more sensible choice but
unlike the ECDL you wouldn't want to recommend it to your
mother/grandmother would you?  (Nod to Ada Lovelace, no need to respond if
you have elder female relations who are exceptionally talented when it
comes to computers ;).

I think it is really great that people are making the effort of doing ECDL
with Open Source Software.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan