Cloud computing is an emerging technology in K-12 environment. It was predicted by the Horizon K12 2010 report last spring as emerging within the year along with collaborative technologies http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2010-Horizon-Report-K12.pdf. (HorizonK12 2011 is due to be published next month). Some of the advantages are higher reliability, excess storage, and lower costs. Our school is planning on implementing this summer so we will have much larger bandwidth for our students at our 8 schools. Currently, YouTube and related sites have been blocked at all our schools. Our teachers are frustrated since there are so many educational videos, especially in YouTube Teacher that they cannot instantly access in their classrooms. Cloud computing will allow us to continue moving in the direction of 1:1 computers in the classroom and well as access to more free resources for our teachers. The Eli 7 report “Seven things you should know about cloud computing” http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/EST0902.pdf raised concerns about “privacy, security, data integrity, intellectual property management, audit trails…”
One solution to this is to develop private cloud or a hybrid cloud, where IT would have more control over security issues.
Here are simplified diagrams of cloud computing from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
Hybrid version:
Tags: cloud computing, hybrid clouds, K12 emerging technologies, Horizon report K12 2010
Here is a link to a video by Dr Chris Dede, Wirth Professor of emerging technologies at Harvard U speaking on Mobiles:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ecampusnews.com/video/?q=3SfVi13wT7QE8COUx8cvFw%253d%253d
Marlene,
ReplyDeleteYour choice of cloud computing is an interesting and valuable one. I do not know much about it but have used Google docs for meetings, storing data, and a book study group. I find it a wonderful tool for my smaller scope personal use. I can see how it would be advantageous in many educational and business settings and hope to use clouds more often in the future. I look forward to your project and learning more.
Sandy