[Year 12 IPM] Database software for 2007

[Mark Scott]

and...

-----Original Message-----
From: ipm-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:ipm-bounces at edulists.com.au]
On Behalf Of margaret.lawson at konstantkaos.net
Sent: Thursday, 12 October 2006 1:26 PM
To: Year 12 Information Technology Processing and Management
Teachers'Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Year 12 IPM] Database software for 2007

Half of my IPM class this year used OpenOffice, the other half used
Access.

An interesting experiment.

Margaret

> Couldn't agree more, the more I use Open Office, the more I like it.
> Once you get over the "Office doesn't do it that way" you appreciate
> that a lot of the differences are actually more productive (IMHO)
> The persistent data sources for mail merges are very handy and context
> sensitive dialogs are only just starting to be a part of MSOffice with
> the upcomming version.
> The major benefits I see are:
> the open file formats - long term accessibility.
> multi platform (Win, Mac AND Linux)
> Oh and did you mention it was free for the whole school community?
;)
>
> Far more beneficial for students to be able to access the same apps at
> home than only at school. If they can do more exploration/ development
> at home, you break the mindset that some have of only learning and
doing
> in the classroom with the teacher.
> Cheers
> Cameron
>
>
> Mark Kelly wrote:
>> [7th attempt - our whole school has been blacklisted by SpamCop - and
>> we hope we are now off the blacklist!]
>>
>> Hi all.  Here's a frisky cat to throw among the pigeons.
>>
>> I'm curious what database management software will people be using
for
>> ITA Unit 3 Outcome 1 next year?
>>
>> At the VITTA presentation I did on ITA in August, I recommended that
if
>> we got organised and agreed on a standard tool we could be much more
>> efficient when sharing tutorials, sample tasks, tips and hints,
sample
>> outcomes etc - all of which will be a big in 2007 as we adjust to the
>> new course.
>>
>> The main DBMS contenders I see are:
>>
>>
>> --- MS Access
>> - Access is not a standard part of the average MS Office suite
(AFAIK),
>> so many kids are unlikely to have it at home, so it would be hard to
>> assign homework or practice tasks using it.
>> - It costs big money if kids have to buy it for home.
>> - It costs big money for non-government schools.
>> - For most people, it's not as easy to learn as Filemaker is.
>>
>>
>> --- Filemaker
>> - Even fewer kids are likely to have Filemaker at home, so assigning
>> home practice would be nearly impossible.
>> - It's easy to learn (especially creating programming scripts) and
easy
>> to use.
>> - It costs big money if kids had to buy it for home.
>> - It costs big money for schools to buy.
>>
>> (Having said that, it's the database I use for McKinnon's reporting
>> package, and the database I'm most skilled with.)
>>
>>
>> --- OpenOffice.org Base
>> - It's FREE for students and schools.
>> - It's compatible with MS Access (and can read Access database files)
>> - It's pretty much as easy to use as Access.
>> - There's some online support for it, but more is coming and we can
work
>> as a team to develop all we need!
>> - Did I mention it's FREE?
>> - It comes with other open source replacements for Word, Excel,
>> Powerpoint, drawing software etc.
>> - It even has its own equivalent of VBA for programming macros.
>> - Oh yeah - and it's FREE!
>>
>>
>> --- MySQL
>> I only include this because I've heard of one school planning to use
it.
>>  I would not recommend it because it's far too complex for kids to
>> learn from scratch in VCE: too much programming required to get the
job
>> done.  Way overkill, IMHO.
>>
>>
>>
>> If you get some time as the year winds down, how about getting a copy
of
>> (http://openoffice.org) - it's about 50M to download, and is
available
>> via WWW and Bittorrent.
>>
>> Have a play, see what you think.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Mark K
>>
>
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