95%
Yes - MS Office can read OpenOffice documents.
Just open it as if it was an OpenOffice document. OpenOffice will read MS Works documents quite happily, and you can either save them as OpenOffice or MS Works formats.
Yes you can open MS Office 2000 documents with OpenOffice and it's cousins LibreOffice (my favorite just now) ApacheOffice (havn't tried it yet but might soon). You can save OpenOffice documents in MS Office 2000 formats too.
A replacement for MS Office (expensive) is either OpenOffice or LibreOffice (both free).
I recommend free office suite provides by OpenOffice. It is compatible with MS Office, as usable, but for free. Practically all operating systems support OpenOffice.
Yes - the student's work will be able to be viewed by the instructor using MS office.
You would need to use the 'save as' command in OpenOffice and save the file as MS Office format.
The two main differences are:- MS Office has to be paid for - OpenOffice is free to download, and... MS Office is a copyright program - OpenOffice is 'open source' This means that Microsoft will NOT licence the end user (you and me) to make changes to their program. Open source means OpenOffice is capable of being edited by the end user to suit their needs.
Office 2007 will run on Windows7 but some changes made and released in Office 2010 take better advantage of the Windows7 interface.
Nope - OpenOffice will read MS Office files without any problems. When you come to save the file, you can choose whether to save in OpenOffice format, or choose a different format from the drop-down menu.
Yes OpenOffice is compatible with all other office suite, like staroffice, MS Office and others. You have calc for replacement of excel files, writer for word replacement, Impress for Powerpoint replacement, Base for access database alternatives and a bonus of draw for replacement of gimp, MS Paint and Photoshop. For getting OpenOffice You can download it at: http://www.openoffice.org or you can buy the Professional official release CD or DVD to http://www.openofficecd.com for installing it into any number of computers. Hope this Answer will be helpful.
Sure. The problem will be that either will open most MS office files so you will need to specify which program is the default for what type of file.