[Offtopic] Dual booting Macs

[Meadows, Roslyn M]

Hi Jim - there have been discussions re top posting or bottom posting on
the lists going back to about 2002, the decision was made that top
posting was more acceptable - especially if you want people to read what
you have written. Some topics can get rather long by the time you have
20 or 30 posts to the topic and it can be an incredibly long way to
scroll down to read what has been written by the bottom poster, and then
it is all lost in various disclaimers etc added by the education
department and various school's email servers. 

I would say most people use their normal email client to read the
edulists, rather than a newsgroup reader, so top posting is more
appropriate, especially if you read the oldest emails first (when they
arrive in your inbox) you already know the content of the previous posts
and do not have to read them again, so scrolling down to the bottom of
the email is annoying. 

Also part of your membership to the edulists stipulates that you state
your position, school and contact details at the bottom of each post.
Even a few members of the lists who have retired or who are CRT's still
sign off with something like:

Name (retired)
Formerly of DaDeDa Secondary College

Or 

Name (Replacement Teacher)
Name of school most regularly teaching at

I understand the constraints of using Novell as your Network OS, I
presumed that Network Operating Systems were able to communicate with
all users no matter what the notebook or desktop operating system.

Rather than tweak each individual mac for your network perhaps you
should just make an image?

For virtually every application produced by MS there is an alternative
for Mac and Linux - If your students need to have a "OneNote" type
application you might try

http://www.mishimo.com/mynotes
http://www.codepoetry.net/products/notae
http://www.chronosnet.com/Products/sohonotes.html
http://www.barebones.com/products/yojimbo/index.shtml

None of the above are free but they aren't that expensive either.

Most other software apps which would be used on a student notebook can
usually be replaced by another app which does virtually the same job,
and often FOSS versions are available also (and improving at an
exponential rate!)

If you need recommendations for an application for a particular purpose
let me know.

Cheers
Ros

Roslyn Meadows
Head of ICT Implementation
Head of Assessment and Reporting
Bentleigh Secondary College 
| 9579 1044 | 0412 614 062 |

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-----Original Message-----
From: offtopic-bounces at edulists.com.au
[mailto:offtopic-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Jim Maunder
Sent: Thursday, 15 May 2008 5:10 PM
To: Information Technology Teachers' Offtopic Mailing List
Subject: RE: [Offtopic] Dual booting Macs

At 04:20 PM 15/05/2008, you wrote:

>  ...
>Jim - we post to the top here, and also why are 
>those who bring Mac's "recalcitrant"? I would 
>say these students are exercising their freedom 
>of choice, do you not allow students to use 
>linux? Do they pay for the notebooks or does the 
>school purchase them? Mac's market share was 8% 
>at the end of 2007 so must be nearing 10% now. 
>Surely you cannot say that students using Mac 
>are "defiant of authority" - a bit harsh. 
>Personally if QuickBooks was compatible with 
>Linux I would remove Windows from both of my 
>laptops and desktop and replace it with Ubuntu.
>
>As ICT teachers/technicians/leaders etc I 
>believe we should all be multi OS literate - 
>besides - if you can use one you can so quickly adapt to all the
others.
>

Arrrgghhh! Top posting! Nearly as bad form as 
using html in e-mail!!! There, I'm showing my 
age. Before MS Outlook and Outlook Express, 
e-mail clients positioned the cursor AFTER quoted 
text - the way things are supposed to be. How 
else does the reader know what the writer is responding to?

We would not support a student using Linux - none 
have appeared here yet. As for freedom of choice, 
there are plenty of things the school mandates - 
school uniform, graphing calculators, behaviour 
outside school when in uniform etc. The students 
and their parents know quite well what the school 
mandates about laptops, and if they ignore this, then they are being
defiant.

Personally, I would be happy to use Linux on my 
desktop - except for the large laptop maintenance 
database running in Access. I don't want to redo 
it in StarOffice (or is it OpenOffice?) Base or MySQL.

rgds
Jim (home time)



-----------------------------------------------------------
We have to use this Disclaimer

Views, opinions, etc. expressed reflect those of the author and not
Ruyton Girls' School
-----------------------------------------------------------

Jim Maunder
Ruyton Girls School
Melbourne, Australia



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