[seul-edu] [Fwd: File formats and distance learning]

[Doug Loss <drloss@suscom.net>]

[I received this this morning.  I'm passing it along to stimulate 
discussion (please do the discussion on the schoolforge-discuss 
mailing list; if you're not already a subscriber, go to 
http://schoolforge.net/sfdiscuss.php and sign up--This includes 
you, James Michael DuPont :-) ).--Doug Loss]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: File formats and distance learning
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 04:25:52 -0800 (PST)
From: James Michael DuPont <mdupont777@yahoo.com>
To: dloss@seul.org

Dear All,

I have gotten my first installment of a e-learning package from 
my university, in Power Point format! I cannot easily view this 
with free software (I mean openoffice is HUGE). I requested that 
they provide me the files in Standard HTML and PNG format or PDF.

It turns out that my school is sponsored by Microsoft, and they 
have these restrictive student licenses the "give" the students 
Office for $10 and require the school to monitor their usage, 
prevent them from using the software commercially, and delete it 
when they are done with school.

After many letters to the directors and professors of the school, 
I agreed to start converting the materials for them into standard
format.

Many other people must have similar problems all over the world!

My question is to you : Are you interested in  promoting free
software and open file formats in  schools and distance learning?

mike


=====
James Michael DuPont
http://introspector.sourceforge.net/

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