geocom:

 

Honestly by the time they get to the workplace the tech is going to have changed.

 

I finished school in 2008 Years 11-13 where Mac and the time before was windows and a pre ribbon word and on mac we used word for mac which at the time was also pre ribbon and pages had only just released. For work i have always used pages.

 

The thing that is important thing to learn is the thing you do in the word processor not the word processor it's self.

 

Also if it was me i would not be accepting .pages or .docx format documents for handing in anyway both have issues when being transferred to a different system such as fonts. PDF's have become the defacto standard because they deal with these issues.

 

PDFs have their own issues, trust me they are not as "universal" as most people think they are.

geocom:

 

Also if it was me i would not be accepting .pages or .docx format documents for handing in anyway both have issues when being transferred to a different system such as fonts. PDF's have become the defacto standard because they deal with these issues.

 

I'd probably standardise on PDFs for submitting assignments because it is ubiquitous.

The PDF format didn't become a defacto standard because it sorted font embedding and substitution. That reason was well down the list. Font substitution was already widely used in DOS and Windows. Word for Windows was embedding scalable (e.g. TrueType) fonts in documents from 1996 only three years after the original PDF format and well before PDFs became a defacto standard.

The main difference has always been that the software to read the PDF file format, Adobe Acrobat Reader, was released for free in 1994 for both the Windows and Mac platforms. Microsoft Office for Windows got free viewers in 1999 but not for the Mac and too late to rival Adobe Reader. Anyway, Word for Mac still cannot embed fonts.

The Word default is not to embed but it is easy enough to turn on.

https://blogs.office.com/2015/07/06/document-font-embedding-demystified/

sir1963: 

 

PDFs have their own issues, trust me they are not as "universal" as most people think they are.

 

I never said they where universal i said they had become the defacto standard which is quite different.

I know my self just how bad PDF's can go and that they can lack in some places but they are a heck of alot better than sending someone a .docx or .pages document which for one do not support embedding of fonts.

Hammerer:

 

 

 

I'd probably standardise on PDFs for submitting assignments because it is ubiquitous.

 

The PDF format didn't become a defacto standard because it sorted font embedding and substitution. That reason was well down the list. Font substitution was already widely used in DOS and Windows. Word for Windows was embedding scalable (e.g. TrueType) fonts in documents from 1996 only three years after the original PDF format and well before PDFs became a defacto standard.

 

The main difference has always been that the software to read the PDF file format, Adobe Acrobat Reader, was released for free in 1994 for both the Windows and Mac platforms. Microsoft Office for Windows got free viewers in 1999 but not for the Mac and too late to rival Adobe Reader. Anyway, Word for Mac still cannot embed fonts.

 

The Word default is not to embed but it is easy enough to turn on.

 

https://blogs.office.com/2015/07/06/document-font-embedding-demystified/

 

Support for font embedding within Office is limited to the Windows desktop versions of Word, PowerPoint and Publisher and is not supported on the Mac OS, iOS, Android or web versions of Word or PowerPoint.

sir1963:

 

 

 

Pages is easy

 

File > Export To > Word...

 

HOWEVER, if they use iCloud, you can open up Pages documents using the online "Pages" web app. So yeah, I have edited pages document on Linux boxes and Windows boxes to prove it can be done.

 

4 years is becoming a long time in IT now. Users were extremely "lucky" with XP in that it was around for such a long time, but that came with a LOT of issues too (32/64 bit), we have a number of machines that have 32/64GB of RAM which is not possible in XP (32 bit) and the 64bit version was flakey for a lot of things (drivers).

 

ALL of our computers are now on a 4-5 year replacement cycle, and we need serious justification to keep old hardware (instrument controllers for example). The New CNC mill still uses embedded XP.

 

Stylus are over rated for most tasks, for a start if you want to type you have to put it down. A mouse is still a great answer to the problem.

 

It is easy to convert pages to docx if you have a mac.  The issue is students will submit a pages document without thinking and then you have to follow up and get them to convert it, which often stuffs up formatting, tables or the custom fonts the girls seem to love.  It is solvable but a hassle.

Stylus are great with symbols, and diagrams such as in maths and science.  

Electronic tests are pretty much unworkable without a stylus in maths and science due to the symbols that are used and the extra time it takes students to find and insert symbols, sub and super script, to insert force diagrams.

If its a school then isnt that a discussion to have with the schools IT support.
Does the school have any real IT infrastructure ?
Do you want to force parents to sell their year old Macs & move to Win/Chromebook

The corporate world uses mostly Windows & MS Office, with the occasional MAC here & there .
In the corp world, the Workstation should be setup to Click & go. As long as they can click on the Word/Outlook icon/shortcut, thats 1/2 the process learnt .
There are still secretaries who dont know how to use a USB stick (not a joke) ,and many employees who cant navigate the most basic of folders.
I'd image once out of school most next gens will be pretty savvy in that regard no matter if Mac or Pc

sir1963:

 

Anyway, I mange the Macs we have in my department at University , they are used by Chemists, Statisticians , Mathematicians, Microbiologists, Engineers, Vets, Physicists, etc etc etc. Documents are done in LaTex, Word, Acrobat, information is gathered/manipulated in Mathematica, Matlab, R, Filemaker,as well as a lot of custom software. We use Windows, OSX, Linux.

 

What tools do you use to manage them? In my environment we are probably 60% windows 35% linux and 5% mac. The windows environment is pretty well understood, with managed configuration and patching etc. There is a lot of manual overhead and trust of the end users involved with the linux and mac fleet.

When something like heartbleed pops up it kicks off a lot of work for us.

schools should not be dictating to parents what their students should be using in class.  Schools need to either accomadate all options or the cheapest option because parents shouldn't have to spend money they have not got because some teachers want the latest and greatest.

...or the cheapest option because .....

 

That would be paper & pen (seriously)
Worked just fine for the last 200+ years

Why the supposed 'need' for laptops & tablets , even at primary school ?

gbwelly:

 

In my environment we are probably 60% windows 35% linux and 5% mac.

 

In my quite wide experience, that's a pretty unusual mix, particularly for desktops.

Outside schools / academia, I'd expect the ratio to be closer to

• for desktops: 95% Windows (mostly Win7 at the moment), 3% Mac, 2% something else
• for servers: 65% Windows, 25% Linux / BSD, 10% other (Slowaris, IBM mainframe, IBM I-series [aka AS400], Unisys mainframe, &c.)
• for laptops: 59% Windows, 39% Mac, 2% something else
• for tablets / smartphones: 59% iOS, 39% Android, 2% something else

Your mileage may vary, of course

alienwithin:

 

 

schools should not be dictating to parents what their students should be using in class.  Schools need to either accomadate all options or the cheapest option because parents shouldn't have to spend money they have not got because some teachers want the latest and greatest.

blackjack17:

alienwithin:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

schools should not be dictating to parents what their students should be using in class.  Schools need to either accomadate all options or the cheapest option because parents shouldn't have to spend money they have not got because some teachers want the latest and greatest.

 

We are a private school. Laptops are expected

LOL rich people thinking expensive toys = improved education.

Einstein, Tesla, Galileo, Edison, Maxwell, Newton, etc etc etc , no computers and look what they achieved.

Kids are so glued to one screen or another they loose out on the social interactions they need to learn at their age.

What the do learn is how to browse porn and get a very distorted view of male/female interactions.

My wife's school uses Google Docs and a variety of other cloud tools, to mitigate exactly the Op's issues.  Device is irrelevant, quality of network is paramount.  

PolicyGuy:

 

gbwelly:

 

In my environment we are probably 60% windows 35% linux and 5% mac.

 

 

 

 

In my quite wide experience, that's a pretty unusual mix, particularly for desktops.

 

Outside schools / academia, I'd expect the ratio to be closer to

 

• for desktops: 95% Windows (mostly Win7 at the moment), 3% Mac, 2% something else
• for servers: 65% Windows, 25% Linux / BSD, 10% other (Slowaris, IBM mainframe, IBM I-series [aka AS400], Unisys mainframe, &c.)
• for laptops: 59% Windows, 39% Mac, 2% something else
• for tablets / smartphones: 59% iOS, 39% Android, 2% something else

 

 

Your mileage may vary, of course

 

While I don't disagree, those are very specific percentages for a thumb suck!

sir1963:

 

blackjack17:

alienwithin:

 

schools should not be dictating to parents what their students should be using in class.  Schools need to either accomadate all options or the cheapest option because parents shouldn't have to spend money they have not got because some teachers want the latest and greatest.

 

We are a private school. Laptops are expected

 

 

 

LOL rich people thinking expensive toys = improved education.

 

Einstein, Tesla, Galileo, Edison, Maxwell, Newton, etc etc etc , no computers and look what they achieved.

 

Kids are so glued to one screen or another they loose out on the social interactions they need to learn at their age.

 

What the do learn is how to browse porn and get a very distorted view of male/female interactions.

 

 

What devices do is expand the range of things you can do in class, in science we can have students hook sensors and data loggers up to computers and carry out a range of experiments.  In technology students can do 3d modelling and produce stuff in our 3d printers, in music mix and record music and so on.

If class time is nothing but memorising a bunch of facts then no they don't need computers.

Students don't use their computer every lesson in every class and we make sure students still use paper and pen.  Students still have a very active social life and interact with each other extensively.  Your comment about porn is strange, I'm not sure how school devices can be blamed for that, not only do we have pretty good filters (yes the students can get around it but each new method tends to get caught pretty quickly), but wouldn't students just use their phones, home computers...  Plus as a girls school online shopping, uber eats, netflix tends to be bigger issues than watching porn.

Having taught at schools that are 1 to 1 and schools that have computer labs, I much prefer the 1 to 1, there are just so many more options, I can make use of computers for part of a lesson and then flick back to a practical or pen and paper.  

Think about what Einstein, Tesla, Galileo, Edison, Maxwell, Newton, etc etc etc could have achieved if they did have access to some of the technology we have now.