Module 1 - Identifying an Emerged Technology Cloud Computing

Introduction

As a student, do you remember the times you would place important documents on a Floppy Disk? As I recall, my Floppy Disks were notorious for not working in another computer, no matter how careful I was in transporting them. As time marched on, to use word processing files, or PowerPoint presentations on another computer, it was necessary to save these files on a CD-ROM disk or thumb drive. You then traveled with your valued information on such a disk or drive, so you could load your information onto another computer, while holding your breath until the document or PowerPoint slides loaded and actually worked. Thank Goodness, those days are in the past, and Cloud Computing has emerged. The safety, stability, and ease-of-use of cloud computing in education is resulting in widespread adoption in educational institutions, utilizing such web-based apps as Microsoft Office 365 for Education and Google Classroom and Drive, just to name a few.

Cloud Computing is a general term for the delivery of hosted services over the Internet. Identified in 2011 as an emerging technology by the New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Report, Cloud Computing and storage has emerged in becoming a valuable educational tools (Alabbadi, 2011). As an educator, if you are using some form of web-based tools, then you are enabling further student-educator collaboration through the use of Cloud Computing.

Challenges

Some of the challenges of employing Cloud Computing are that not all applications are build with a Web-Based version for use in cloud, as well as, data security, regulatory compliance concerns, lock-in and privacy concerns. I will address two of these challenges, Web-Based Apps and Data Security.

Web-Based Apps are designed for access through a Web browser or an application client that serves as a user interface (Heilig & Voß, 2014). Not all applications and software that educators currently use are web-based. Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint are leading productivity software used in almost every classroom. Up until a few years ago, there was not a web-based version of the Microsoft Office suite. In 2013, Microsoft decided to expand its powerful productivity tools into a Web-Based version titled Microsoft Office 365 for Education. Before 2013, educators and students used Google Docs as one primary productivity tool for producing and sharing Cloud documents. Both Microsoft Office 365 and Google Docs, through Google Drive are regarded as the top 2 Cloud document productivity tools for educational purposes.

When employing cloud computing services, schools / school districts must have a well-defined understanding of potential security risks associated with cloud computing, and set realistic expectations with their cloud provider (Heilig & Voß, 2014). There are three different service categories in which Educational Administrators must consider. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) each model brings different security levels, requirements and responsibilities. Without going into great detail, these three levels of security indicated which side of the cloud (Cloud Administration or School District Administration) is responsible for certain security controls and accountability.  

Societal Needs and Benefits

Cloud computing is changing and impacting our lives in many ways. Education Administrators have come to realize the many benefits of cloud technology and have begun to adopt its technology tools for several reasons (Mansuri, Verma, & Laxkar, 2014). Cloud Computing gives students the ability to access curriculum data for online coursework and to participate in group activities anywhere, anytime, and virtually anyway they choose, employing a variety of technology tools from desktop computers to tablets and smartphones. Education Institutions are reducing expenses considerably by combining business automation processes to modernize the management of student records, course enrollments, as well as, student assignments and attendance tracking.  

On a more societal level, Cloud Computing tools offer educational benefits to students from developing countries (Shanahan, Harrison, & May, 2015). In addition, access is now instantly available and in many instances free due to the proliferation of websites providing educational material and cloud knowledge-sharing communities.

Pitfalls and Advantages

A potential pitfall of Cloud Computing is downtime. Downtime can mean a loss of data or access to data if the cloud provider is off-line (Puthal, Sahoo, Mishra, & Swain, 2015). No cloud service supplier, even the most recommended and responsible, would claim invulnerability to service outages. Cloud computing systems are internet based, which means their access is fully dependent on the users Internet connection. Therefore, like any hardware, cloud platforms themselves can fail for a myriad of reasons. When the institution's internet connection goes down, all of its applications drop offline.

One advantageous way to combat downtime is to demand a service level agreement (SLA) from the Cloud service provider that is employed, guaranteeing up-times in excess of 99.55%, which equals 1.83 days of downtime a year, or 3.60 hours of downtime a month. Maximizing downtime will reduce stress for everyone, administrators, educators, students and parents and Cloud providers alike.

In conclusion, educational institutions have been quick to realize the advantages of cloud technology and have been eagerly adopting the Cloud for several reasons, including the ability for students to access data anywhere, anytime, using a plethora of computing and mobile devices, to enroll in online classes and to participate in group activities.  

If you would like to learn more about Cloud Computing use for Education, I would recommend the following scholarly journal article: González-Martínez, J. A., Bote-Lorenzo, M. L., Gómez-Sánchez, E., & Cano-Parra, R. (2015). Cloud computing and education: A state-of-the-art survey. Computers & Education, 80, 132-151. In addition, here are links to a website called TechKnowledge, they share my enthusiasm for Cloud Computing.

TechKnowledge

http://techknowledge.org.uk and http://techknowledge.org.uk/blog/cloud-computing/

References:

Alabbadi, M. M. (2011, September). Cloud computing for education and learning: Education and learning as a service (ELaaS). In Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL), 2011 14th International Conference on (pp. 589-594). IEEE.

González-Martínez, J. A., Bote-Lorenzo, M. L., Gómez-Sánchez, E., & Cano-Parra, R. (2015). Cloud computing and education: A state-of-the-art survey. Computers & Education, 80, 132-151.

Heilig, L., & Voß, S. (2014). Decision analytics for cloud computing: a classification and literature review. Tutorials in Operations Research–Bridging Data and Decisions, 1-26.

Mansuri, A. M., Verma, M., & Laxkar, P. (2014). Benefit of Cloud Computing for Educational Institutions and Online Marketing. Information Security and Computer Fraud, 2(1), 5-9.

Shanahan, H., Harrison, A., & May, S. T. (2015). Teaching Data Science and Cloud Computing in Low and Middle Income Countries. Advanced Techniques in Biology & Medicine, 2015.

Puthal, D., Sahoo, B. P. S., Mishra, S., & Swain, S. (2015, January). Cloud computing features, issues, and challenges: a big picture. In Computational Intelligence and Networks (CINE), 2015 International Conference on (pp. 116-123). IEEE.