Last week, a student who visits the Writing Lab often came in with an urgent problem: the trial edition of Word on her laptop expired, but she needed to type a paper.
I contacted a friend of mine who works with Ubuntu Linux (he has written technical books for them, as well as rescuing another friend's computer by installing Linux). I figured he would know if a free or inexpensive word processing program existed for this student. He did.
He pointed me to OpenOffice.org. I knew nothing of Open Office, but now I'm sad that many students do not know. It's a free batch of programs from Sun Microsystems that match up with Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and more. I'm all for anything that will help students spend less, and this student got the equivalent of Word for free.
Now she can work on her papers at home when she has the time instead of trying to work all her writing time into her busy schedule and the Writing Center's summer hours.
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I just starting using Open Office as well. My brother turned me on to it about 2 months ago. It's great for students b/c, like you said, it's free!
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