When reading this article I noticed one sentence in particular that really stood out to me. Cloud computing, was said to have the potential to offer staff and students better services at a lower cost than the technology deployment models they're using now. Right there, I thought to myself, well who wouldn't want to use this method? Cloud computing was noted as having many advantages with its applications that rely on file storage and the internet itself. This method allows for files and programs to be stored elsewhere, so the computer doesn't have to hold much on its hard drive. One positive aspect is that", cloud computing also makes it possible to use less-powerful computers, such as netbooks. A school district can lower its computing costs by using these inexpensive computers to access the cloud". It noted that many schools and universities are already using the cloud.
Netbooks, according to Wikipedia, are "a category of small-sized, low-cost, lightweight, lean-function subnotebooks optimized for Internet access and core computing functions." This I feel is great for programs such as word processing and other document programs.
One last aspect I liked in this article was the mention of google docs and gmail, as being intertwined with clouding. Google is a high networking source and gmail is my current emailing account. I can definitely contest and say that cloud computing may soon be the norm using in education.
(copying over my comment from the other blog http://edu422jess.blogspot.com)
ReplyDeleteHi Jessica,
I totally agree that cloud computing is the way to go. As you said, who wouldn't want to? There are no major downsides compared to the traditional software model, which is expensive, requires constant upkeep, and is often subject to bugs and user error. Cloud computing is great for schools that want to save money because it lets you use inexpensive computers and inexpensive software to get pretty much the same result as you would from buying traditional software licenses. There are plenty of web-based applications for pretty much anything you can think of that you've had to use software for in the past.
The only thing that can mess up cloud computing is if something happens to your internet connection. That is a very possible problem - its not like Google ever goes down, but imagine you live in a small rural town and a storm knocks out the internet connection for a few days - all cloud applications and data would be locked away, whereas traditional software data would be accessible as long as there is electricity. We unfortunately do not yet live in a society where we have 100% guaranteed internet access, so making a widescale jump to cloud computing is a little premature. But in general, I think we should be making the shift towards letting students just use Google Docs instead of wastefully forcing schools to buy 600 copies of Microsoft Office.