Let education "cloud" up

In Ethiopia on the African continent, more than 250,000 of teachers and students are enjoying the services that cloud computing brings-free apps and high quality course resources. Similarly, in Finland at the northern end of the globe, children from 57 rural schools are collaborating and creating using the rich online learning environment provided by cloud computing.

Cloud computing has been quiet from the noisy concept of a few years ago, is quietly into our side, changing our lives and learning.

I. Understanding Cloud Computing

There are many explanations of cloud computing, some of which are defined, and some are described in generalities. Different people stand in different perspectives, the understanding of cloud computing will be presented in different forms.

After years of research and 15 revisions, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a 16th version of the definition of cloud computing, which is also the definitive version of the definition of cloud computing. This is recognized as the most suitable for the relevant industries, levels, and easy to understand the definition.

According to NIST's official definition, "cloud computing is a model, able to achieve ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand access to configurable computing resources (such as networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) through the network, and can be quickly configured and published with minimal administrative work or interaction with service providers. ”

The NIST definition also covers five key features of the cloud model: users can get the services on demand, and can use a wide range of network access, access to resource pool computing resources, the corresponding service capacity can be flexible supply and release, and can be measured; three service modes: infrastructure, service, The software is the service and the platform is the service; four deployment models: public cloud, private cloud, community cloud, and mixed cloud.

Second, look at the cloud computing from the education angle

The education cloud, which is often mentioned in the industry, is simply explained by the ability of cloud computing to serve the development of education. The future education needs the support of information technology, and many schools are relatively short of money, technology and talent. The emergence of educational clouds can provide new solutions for the education industry to solve these problems, and make educators more focused on education itself. Therefore, to understand cloud computing from an educational perspective, it is mainly from the application level, without concern for the details behind it. The application of education cloud can be divided into the following aspects:

Management-lower management costs and more efficient management practices;

Technical staff-simpler technology and better service;

Teachers and students-more accessible and more resources;

Librarian--richer books and more readers;

Parents-more direct attention and more convenient communication;

Society--Better education services and better quality of teaching.

In fact, the implementation of the education cloud not only completes each task mentioned above, but also integrates these tasks to form a new model of future education development. And as you read this, the future is gradually becoming reality.

III. education migration to cloud computing

What can educational institutions do to make use of cloud computing services? You can usually choose from three service modes. The first is the use of cloud computing infrastructure Services (IaaS), the second is the use of cloud computing software Services (SaaS), the third is the use of cloud computing provided by the Development Platform Services (PaaS). The first two modes of service are the choice of most educational institutions, and few primary and secondary schools choose a third service.

(i) Building educational cloud services using IaaS. This method is suitable for the original information service of educational institutions. For example, schools have deployed management systems, student information systems, learning management systems and so on services. Migrating these existing services to cloud computing is a sensible decision to reduce hardware upgrades and ongoing maintenance costs. Instead of worrying about expanding the data center, schools need to take advantage of the infrastructure services provided by cloud computing.

New Hampshire State's Sanborn District High School is one such case. The school has its own technology and network, and managers of multiple servers to provide services to teachers and students. With the aging of the equipment, more and more maintenance problems are bothering the school's technical team. They have been overwhelmed to get the school information system working. Fortunately, the school's IT director Stark discovered the advantages of cloud computing. So they decided to use a limited budget to move the school's information management system into the cloud. It only takes a few months, Sanborn District High School has migrated to the cloud with its student information system (which integrates student info, course resources, teacher management and other data, and provides 24-hour daily service), Student health records management system, school food Hygiene Management System (managing all high school student lunch accounts). Now the school technical team maintenance work has been greatly reduced, and teachers and students to visit the speed of related services has been more than 10 times times the promotion.

(ii) Use SaaS to build educational cloud services. This way is suitable for educational institutions before the information level is not high, or information services deployment is more fragmented situation. Typically, such institutions need to be redesigned and deployed to improve the level of information services. Through the use of cloud computing software as a service, not only can reduce the cost of data center investment, but also to speed up the deployment of various information systems time. Because SaaS cloud service providers have built up a variety of software and applications, educational institutions can provide better teaching support for teachers and students only by purchasing corresponding services according to their own needs.

According to a survey published in the 2011 California Education Opportunity Report, many students ' academic performance is progressing slowly due to a lack of quality education and equal educational opportunities. Many schools want to change the status quo by digitizing learning. And the cuts in California's education budget have put a strain on the state's K12 schools, especially the weak technical infrastructure of some schools. With SaaS-mode cloud services, schools pay only monthly, eliminating the cost of additional hardware, software licensing, installation, setup, maintenance, and maintenance. This allowed the school's plans to be implemented smoothly. More than 200 schools across the state are using web-based Learning management applications and teaching resources from cloud services to help students digitally learn, even in poor school districts.

The school district of New York Buffalo has purchased a cloud-based student information System (SIS) service to provide a unified service for its schools, ending the fragmented information management of previous schools. This is a case of centralized deployment of information management systems based on the SaaS cloud.

(iii) Use PAAs to build educational cloud services. This approach is suitable for a large number of students need to learn a variety of software development institutions of higher learning and vocational education. Since the purchase and deployment of software development platforms is complex and expensive, some schools have begun to choose the development environment deployed in cloud computing for professional teaching. This same computer laboratory, can be suitable for a variety of software development teaching, without the need for different development environment to establish a room. And cloud computing can be virtual out of a variety of operating systems for software work debugging, which can save the school a small amount of cost.

After determining the service model of cloud computing, the next thing to think about is how to deploy the cloud. That is, the choice of the public cloud, private cloud, community cloud, or mixed cloud, for teachers and students to provide education cloud services.

Iv. Public cloud services for education

The public cloud can be understood to be the creation of resources by cloud computing providers and their use in the form of services available to the public through the Web. A network disk is a public familiar with public cloud services.

(a) Google Education cloud services

The Google Apps Education Edition is a free cloud service for schools. It is based on the "Software as a service" model, for all types of school teachers and students to provide web version of communication tools (Gmail), Office suite (google files), calendar and collaboration tools (Google collaboration platform), as well as infrastructure and security: To enable schools to easily put existing IT systems and Google Apps Integration, while protecting the school's network security.

So far, millions of students and educators around the world are using the Google Apps Education edition. Because it has the following advantages, so that schools can focus on students, rather than technical.

1. Provide students with an oversized storage space for storing mail, documents and operations;

2. Alleviating the workload of the school technical sector;

3. Simple deployment procedures and cost savings

4. Global collaboration to share valuable experience;

5. High security protects your privacy

6. Immediate access to and use of the latest technology;

Currently, Google has integrated education cloud services into student terminal equipment, providing schools with 1 to 1 learning solutions based on cloud computing. Google's cloud terminal equipment Chromebook equipped with a new chrome operating system, especially to enhance the cloud computing function, the teacher and student applications, files and settings, stored in the cloud server, reduce the operation of terminal equipment and data storage burden. Students don't have to worry about losing computers because they can also log in to another Chromebook to continue working.

In the United States, dozens of schools began to use Google's cloud terminals as a learning tool for the number of students. Chromebook has challenged the ipad as a new option for K12 schools to implement the 1:1 calculation.

(ii) Microsoft Education Cloud Services

Microsoft's live@edu is a similar education cloud service for Google Apps education. It provides students with many functions such as email, calendar, bulk storage, file sharing, instant messaging, video chat, and more. The aim is to promote communication and cooperation among students, and to help them to carry out digital learning. It is easy to deploy, execute, and manage. More than 10,000 schools in more than 130 countries are already using live@edu, with a global reach of 22 million people.

In 2012, Microsoft upgraded live@edu to Office 365 Education edition to compete with Google Apps education. In the past, educational institutions using live@edu automatically upgraded to use new cloud services. New features include: Group video and voice chat, and online file viewing and editing.

V. Education Community Cloud

"Community Cloud" is an integral part of the large "public cloud" category. It refers to the cloud computing deployment pattern formed by cloud computing service providers to provide computing resources, network resources, software and service capabilities in a certain geographical range. Based on the advantages of network interconnection and the easy integration of technology, we can provide a unified cloud computing service for regional users by integrating various computing capabilities in the region and combining the common needs of users in the community.

Now some regional education departments are looking for more ways to build a cloud computing platform to create economies of scale. K-12 schools in Illinois State have found the answer to a nonprofit cloud-computing alliance that has been combined with several public school districts. Illinois State Education Community Cloud Illinicloud began operation in 2009 and currently serves 150 school districts to meet their needs for computing resources, such as cloud storage, disaster recovery services, shared software services, learning performance management services, and so on.

Clearly this is a way to effectively use school technology inputs. The previous government budget was sliced up to every school, and now this part of the money is concentrated, and each member's school has more resources and services than before. Illinois State's approach allows us to see the education community cloud computing as a viable way to provide students with a higher standard of service.

Vi. School Private Cloud

Private clouds are built for a single organization to use alone, thus providing the most effective control over data, security, and quality of service. The organization has the infrastructure and the means to control how applications are deployed on this infrastructure. Private clouds can be deployed within the firewall of the organization's data center, or they can be deployed in a secure hosting site. Private cloud can be built by the organization's own IT department or by a cloud provider.

The Santa Barbara Business School has used its learning management system as a private cloud service to gain more control and customization. The academy used to be an open source Moodle learning Management system provided through SaaS, although its ability to customize and control learning management systems was limited. College system administrators want to be able to customize their functions and integrate Moodle with their Campusvue student information systems.

In early 2013, the Institute collaborated with a cloud technology provider to deploy a private cloud. The provider provides a hosting infrastructure for the college, as well as platform and software support. The institute gained complete control and ownership of the learning management system, but did not need to spend time and money on campus to install and maintain the necessary hardware and software. With this private cloud service, the academy now has the ability to fully customize Moodle to take advantage of features they previously could not use, while using open source code systems with security features such as disaster recovery and data privacy.

Vii. Education Mixed Cloud

A hybrid cloud consists of two or more clouds (community cloud, private cloud, or public cloud) that are linked by standard or proprietary technology to enable data and application portability. For example, a school can combine the extensibility and on-demand features of its local hardware and cloud computing facilities, and then put its applications on the best platform for data processing to cross between the two. This is a great way to leverage the existing infrastructure to build flexible, scalable, dynamic configurations. It also provides a solution to the problem of maintaining the security and privacy of sensitive data in schools.

Northern Ireland implemented the UK's largest education cloud project in April 2012. All 1200 secondary and primary schools in the region, as well as 350,000 of teachers and students, can use a variety of equipment to access the services of the cloud through WiFi access.

This is a huge educational hybrid cloud solution created using the advantages of community cloud and public cloud. This includes the use of public cloud services to provide students with Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps, and learning management systems and data backups that are serviced by the community cloud. The full use of cloud resources at the same time to ensure the security of teachers and students information.

The British Commonwealth Study Group also opted for data backup based on hybrid cloud. The group consists of 20 colleges and 11 independent schools, 30,000 students and 5,500 employees. Because it involves students and staff sensitive personal data, the need for cloud computing to ensure data security and confidentiality. They took the hybrid cloud model to build a private cloud with a dedicated data center device within the group, while at the same time buying the infrastructure services of cloud providers and connecting and backing them up.

Development of Education cloud services

Now, the cloud is everywhere. From the perspective of ordinary learners, while enjoying the cloud services, we can completely ignore everything behind cloud computing. So in a sense, the Internet is a huge educational cloud. And two recent events will make you agree.

A) The charm of MOOCs

MOOCS (large-scale online open course) is the new development of Internet teaching in the last two years. Many of the world's elite schools have launched their own online courses, and the number of enrolled in the study is very large. The Khan Academy has created a miracle of online education, benefiting tens of millions of of learners. Similar to the advantages of MOOCs education cloud services is that educators can use the large data collected behind them to conduct adaptive analysis, develop better courses, and be suitable for learners ' individualized learning. Let people all over the world enjoy the quality of learning resources, and anytime to learn the cloud, this is the future of education.

(ii) Gamma Tes Mitra's Cloud School

Suga Tes Mitra, a professor at Newcastle University in Britain, is implementing his "cloud school" in remote areas of India. He put the people who connect behind the Internet as an important part of the education cloud service. The Cloud school idea is that a small class of 24 students, managed by cloud Granny, interacts with children through video-chatting tools to ask questions, encourage students to learn from their own organization, and provide the necessary help and encouragement. Mitra conceived cloud schools make full use of students ' self-study ability, greatly reduce educational input, subvert traditional education methods, and create educational equity. 2013 Mitra The TED Award for 1 million dollars.

The cloud is changing education. Enjoy it, whatever it is!