Learning and Teaching Scotland is a national public body that supports the development of education in Scotland, including Gaelic education.

Welcoming the launch, Chief Executive of LT Scotland Bernard McLeary said,
'On behalf of Learning and Teaching Scotland I am delighted to announce the launch of OpenOffice.org1.1 gàidhlig, which marks an important stage in the development of the use of ICT within Gaelic education. It will allow Gaelic teachers and learners to use a bespoke software package that is specifically tailored to their needs.'

Learning and Teaching Scotland was able to commission the translation of the software package thanks to the National Grid for Learning Digital Content Procurement programme and the free software will be distributed to all Gaelic-medium and Gaelic-teaching schools in Scotland in the autumn.

OpenOffice.org1.1 gàidhlig is a sophisticated multi-platform office productivity suite for the Gaelic community, which includes the key desktop applications, such as word processor (WRITER); spreadsheet (CALC); presentation manager (IMPRESS), and a drawing program (DRAW).

Mairead MacDonald, Director of Stòrlann Nàiseanta na Gàidhlig, said,
'This is a very important step for Gaelic education. By providing a Gaelic environment on the computer, OpenOffice.org has added an entirely new and welcome dimension to the resources available to today's students.'

While the finished software will soon be available to all Gaelic schools in Scotland, a beta version was piloted at Greenfaulds High School in North Lanarkshire, where Dr Danny Cleland used it with S1 pupils.
'They found the interface intuitive and, without difficulty, transferred skills gained from using similar programs in English. They successfully collected, processed and charted data using the spreadsheet, entered, edited and formatted text and graphics using the word processor, and finally brought the information together in an effective visual display using the presentation application.'

This flexible Gaelic software is ideal for beginners as well as the more computer literate, and works transparently with a variety of file formats such as Microsoft Office. Users will be able to work with and exchange Microsoft files without any problems.
OpenOffice.org is available in over 45 different languages and is developed, supported, and promoted by an international community operating from the OpenOffice website. This latest version has a variety of new features including enhancements to footnotes and hyperlinks in Tables of Contents in the Writer application; intelligent sum button in CALC; Flash export in Draw and Impress; and a new Report AutoPilot.

Related links to this article:
Learning and Teaching Scotland [1]

The open licensing model means that people can use and share the software without charge. OpenOffice.org1.1 gàidhlig will be freely downloadable onto individual desktop computers and network servers from http://gd.openoffice.org/ [2]

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e-Government National Awards
The e-Government National Awards (www.e-GovernmentAwards.org.uk [3]) recognise and praise the best strategies, achievements, teams and individuals in UK e-Government.

Full details of the 2005 Awards entry schedules, supported by the Cabinet Office e-Government Unit [4] and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister [5] will be announced soon. Platinum sponsor is KPMG [6].