HIT->Claris vs Office (2)

[Laura Richards <LERich7@AOL.COM>]

Dear netters,

Here's more!

Laura Richards
Librarian
Fox River Grove School District 3
Fox River Grove, IL  60021
LERich7@aol.com
-------
I have used both programs and find Office to be far more powerful, both in
ease of use and performance.  A click of a button will perform many tasks that
either can't be done or take numerous steps with Claris.  For instance,
creating a border for a paper -- with Claris, the steps are so numerous, I had
to keep a "cheat sheet" nearby, and even then, it was too complicated for the
students.  With Office, you click on Tables and Borders, select a couple of
preferences, and you have a border.  Another example -- teachers can use the
spreadsheet quite easily to create lesson plan templates because cells can be
merged  with a click.    A great feature on Office '98 is the little animated
computer that sits ready to help you at any time.  You can ask a question in
natural language, and it does a decent job of offering topic choices to click
on that may answer your question.   This has saved me the ol' "get out the
manual and start hunting" step on numerous occasions. I could go on and on
with examples.  Give Office some time, and you'll love it.  (I hate giving
Bill Gates more business, but hey, he has a good thing here.)
-------
We use ClarisWorks at our school for students and the majority of staff. A few
have Office due to the insistence of the Central Office, where it
predominates. I have Office and use it only in those instances. For all else,
I use ClarisWorks (now called AppleWorks). We have it for both our Macintosh
and Windows computers. Most of the other schools in our district, except for
one elementary which uses ClarisWorks also, uses Microsoft Works with
students.

I believe that buying Microsoft Office for ALL levels is like buying an
options-laden, large Cadillac to teach students to drive when a Toyota Corolla
would do the job cheaper, easier and more economically. ClarisWorks has all
the needed features of Office with a few extra of its own that are useful in
the classroom. Why overburden students with so many fancy options that confuse
many adults, besides which Office also takes up so much more RAM and hard
drive space?

We will upgrade to ClarisWorks/AppleWorks 5.0 next year, with the few Office
users upgrading to Office 98 (Macs) and Office97 (PCs).
-------
We went with office in our school because the site license was far less
expensive than ClarisWorks at the time. We have 60 teachers, each with a
computer on their desk and it sort of made sense to have some unity in that
area.  Some teachers did request ClarisWorks, they did get a copy, but there
was so much trouble in sharing data, they switch to office, at least for
school stuff.  As far as students using Office...I see 6, 7, and8th graders
using it with no problem.
-------
This is one of those "what you want vs. what's practical" kind of issues.
Each of those programs has some strengths and weaknesses. I use both pretty
extensively, and here's what I've seen. (BTW, you didn't mention whether they
were using reg. ClarisWorks or ClarisWorks for Kids, but since they were
willing to go with full-strength Office for the little people, I assume you
were using regular ClarisWorks.)

ClarisWorks is a truly beautiful program. It has never had the
high-powered, full-featuredness that the Big Boys provide, but it has had some
other things to recommend it:  It has the draw, paint, and database modules -
a big plus. Office just never attains to this, although you can do SOME
drawing, and you can
have a small database for mailmerge purposes. But to get the rest of it you
have to buy some high powered MS standalone products, such as MS Access.  ALL
the modules work together beautifully, and since you have the option of
frames, you can use one module from within another, never having to go outside
the program.  The reporting features in the database are flexible and superb.
The draw module does MANY things that the higher powered publishing programs
do, at much less space and cost. To get the same, you'd have to buy MS
Publisher. (Perhaps this is included in some versions of Office, but
it wasn't in mine.)

Office has some glorious features. It IS the industry standard, and it is
well-supported (consider the switch from ClarisWorks to AppleWorks) - with
Office, the consistency is there. However, it is more complicated to use the
pieces with one another. Each very full-featured program is basically a
standalone. From CW, you can create draw pages AND use them as a slide show,
even though you will not have the fancy bells and whistles of PowerPoint. In
CW, you can create a spreadsheet and use it as a frame within a word
processing doc. This is probably possible in Office, but you will have to open
two separate programs to create it. Since Office has SO many features,
learning it can be a real task for little people. Some of the automated
correction features can actually be a pain in the neck and interfere with what
you are doing, which would be confusing and frustrating for youngsters and new
users. We are going with Office districtwide, as you are, but our district is
an IBM stronghold. Most of our people have never seen ClarisWorks, and would
not have access to it even if they had, since it will no longer be available
for IBM. If I had my druthers for something to use with kids, it would
definitely be ClarisWorks, but I realize that I would have to bow to the way
of the world and probably choose Office. Another victory for the Microsoft
Monster, but that's the way it is.
-------
Its just because you're used to Claris.  Office is like so way better its
awesome.  I hated Office when we switched to it from WordPerfect Office, but
once we got used to it, everyone agreed it was better.  Now I'm at another
school where they have Claris and it sucks in comparison, especially the
spreadsheet.  Enough people here have Office at home and hate Claris that we
will be switching next year.
-------
We use Office exclusively for K-8. I don't tell you this to offer any great
wisdom one way or the other, since we're mostly Windows and therefore
Clarisworks isn't even an option. My point is that Office works just great for
all grades. I have used Clarisworks plenty of times and I would have trouble
doing with that program all the things we do with Office, from photo
manipulation to multimedia, all without having to buy additional software such
as Hyperstudio or Photoshop. Of course, I have no way of knowing if I have
seen the very latest Clarisworks, either, and maybe a new version does those
things. Are your preferences based on the fact that you are just used to
Clarisworks or do you actually find one better than the other, feature for
feature? They are both very easy to use for kids, even the younger ones.
-------

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=
    All postings to LM_NET are protected under copyright law.
To quit LM_NET (or set-reset NOMAIL or DIGEST), send email to:
 listserv@listserv.syr.edu         In the message write EITHER:
 1) SIGNOFF LM_NET 2) SET LM_NET NOMAIL or 3) SET LM_NET DIGEST
 3) SET LM_NET MAIL  * Please allow for confirmation from Listserv
 For LM_NET Help & Archives see:  http://ericir.syr.edu/lm_net/
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=