Italian Ministry of Education: problem of freedom

[Massimo Barbieri]

Hi!

The Italian Ministry of Education University and Research (MIUR) offers
every year a series of obligatory written tests in order to evaluate the
levels of student learning. Those tests are carried out by the National
Institute for the Evaluation of Educational System (INVALSI)[1] from
which it derives its name: "INVALSI tests". The INVALSI is subject to
supervision by the MIUR and of course they should work in a neutral way
towards the market of the software, but unfortunately it is not.

The INVALSI provides schools with an XLS file which contains macros to
record the evaluation of the students. Of course this file doesn't work
with Free Software and doing so the INVALSI force schools to use
proprietary software.

Unfortunately the XLS file was provided to me by a school, but they
asked to me to not spread it (for the moment). I posted a screencapture
of the macro in action on proprietary software.

  http://lugscandiano.org/index.php/File:Invalsi_non-free.png

I would like that the FSFE get active with the MIUR and the INVALSI to
ask them to solve this problem of freedom. Of course I will be glad to
get myself active to this campaign and I can ask for the cooperation of
the LUG Scandiano, to which I belong, which in the past has been very
active on the PDFreaders campaign. Maybe we could even ask for a support
of the Italian Community of LibreOffice and perhaps also of The Document
Foundation to give more weight to our eventual action.

Next weekend I will meet Italo Vignoli, from The Document Foundation, in
an event dedicated to Libre Office organized by LUG Scandiano. If you
think it might be useful I could talk to him about this idea.

Please let me know.

Ciao,
Massimo

 1. http://www.invalsi.it/invalsi/index.php
-- 
IM: massimo at jabber.fsfe.org - GnuPG Public Key-Id: 0x5D168FC1

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