Jen Millea @ education.au

Cloud computing is another buzz word spilling into the education sector and IT press.

What does it mean for a teacher, for education, for a school?

In simple terms cloud computing enables you to access software applications, hardware, data and computer processing power on the web, rather than loading software onto your own computer or school server. That is, using the ‘cloud’ means using the internet as your own personal computer, processor and storage environment, accessing it with any internet-capable device, from any physical location 24/7/365.

It’s always on, always available, accessible from anywhere.

The term ‘cloud computing’ is synonymous with the terms ‘Software as a service’ (SaaS), a hosted service, or utility computing. And for anyone who wants to work from multiple locations – such as different campuses, home, conferences, and while travelling – cloud computing makes perfect sense. Use a free open web service for collaboration with colleagues (groups.edna.edu.au), a bookmarking service for saving and annotating online teaching resources and articles (delicious.com), a mindmapping tool for brainstorming (www.mindomo.com), Google docs for calendars, document sharing, photo sharing, and Facebook (www.facebook.com) for keeping up with friends and family – the range and sophistication of the web software available is amazing.

Using any or all of these services is a simple matter – register for free, agree to the terms and conditions, and then use the application. You don‘t pay, you don’t sign up for a plan, you (usually) don’t have to download anything, or pay licensing fees. For an individual, this is web heaven.

What does it mean for education? Cloud computing is used in two ways in the education sector: by individual teachers or schools, and by jurisdictions.

Using the cloud is appealing to teachers: they use the cloud to support particular teaching and learning experiences and the software is available, free, and ready to use. For students cloud applications can add richness and variety to their learning experience enabling them to undertake study activities and collaborate with other students outside standard school hours. The cloud enables an individual teacher to exploit new web software applications for learning purposes without their school or jurisdiction committing to an enterprise implementation. It enables and supports innovation in the use of new technologies for learning with minimal investment.

What does it mean for schools? Cloud computing is used to provide enterprise services to schools and jurisdictions. A simple example of this is the New South Wales Department of Education and Training which is using Google’s Gmail service to provide an email service to all its school students. The use of the cloud means that increases in usage levels can be easily and immediately accommodated – that is, the service provider can supply additional computer processing power or storage capacity at peak periods (say, during term time), and can reduce supply when it’s not needed (say over the Christmas break). That means jurisdictions don’t have to have to buy, support and maintain a whole infrastructure to service short peak periods. Instead it can utilise the capacity of the cloud.

Traps for the unwary

However, some of the implications of using cloud computing services need to be kept in mind. Those listed below apply particularly to individual teachers using cloud computing applications with their students – and thus to their schools. While the issues may seem daunting at first glance, a good understanding of the applications being used, the problems that might arise, guidelines for use, communication with students, and risk management and mitigation strategies mean that the cloud can be used to provide students with rich online learning experiences.

There’s no guarantee that the service will continue
Applications in the cloud are provided by commercial entities to make a profit: sometimes they are still in beta, sometimes they are from start-ups funded by venture capital which may run out, sometimes it’s decided they are not viable. That means there’s no guarantee that service you use and rely on today will continue to exist, and your transition time from one service to another may be limited. For example, internet juggernaut Google launched its 3D virtual world ‘Lively’ in July 2008 and closed it in December the same year, much to the dismay of some educators who had started using it for teaching and learning purposes.

Lack of interoperability and transferability
Cloud computing does not promote aggregation of content as a number of separate services are likely to be used to host and store information and content. Additionally it does not facilitate the establishment of interoperable school administrative and learning systems. Individual cloud providers may have little or no interest in interoperability or transferability as it’s in their interests to keep you tied to their service.

Terms and conditions
Some cloud services reserve intellectual property (IP) rights over everything you post so may lose IP in critical materials or to collections of materials - such as those you compile on Delicious. And if you are using the cloud for work you need to ensure the terms and conditions of the cloud service do not conflict with those of the school or jurisdiction. For example, Facebook’s terms of service state that:

“All content on the Site and available through the Service, including designs, text, graphics, pictures, video, information, applications, software, music, sound and other files, and their selection and arrangement (the “Site Content”), are the proprietary property of the Company, its users or its licensers with all rights reserved”.

This may be in conflict with employment contracts, organisational policy, and have implications for student work.

Privacy
Privacy settings for user accounts are established by the individual service. It is your responsibility to ensure that your account content is locked down or made available the way you want it to be. And beware: some services have default settings that make all content and profile information public.

Security
In order to make registration simple, some services allow easy-to-crack passwords. Make sure the passwords you use are hard to guess (for example, don’t use a combination of text and numbers related to your personal details like your birth date and name) and use different passwords for different services.

Backups
Don’t rely on the cloud for backups. Keep backup copies so that in the event of a sudden outage or service closure you are still able to access your content and give that presentation to the class, or mark the work your students completed for their assessment.

Perpetuity
Services may allow you to delete the account but may retain all your content forever, and continue to use it in whatever way they wish. This will often be specified in the terms and conditions of service. This means control of your digital identity may be in the hands of others.

Denial of service
From time to time services decide that you, as a user, have infringed their terms and conditions of service, or you are reported to them by another party. The services will generally suspend your account immediately and it will be up to you to convince them to allow you to access your account. With international cloud services with hundreds of millions of users, it can be challenging to get them to respond in a timely manner. Australian academic, Elmo Keep, found her Facebook account suspended because Facebook thought her name ‘Elmo’ was made up and Facebook requires that real names to be used at registration.

Content issues
Many cloud services are supported by advertising, and/or they may have adult or unsuitable content. It’s important that the uncontrolled content is considered as part of the risk mitigation strategy.

So if you are a teacher using an application not formally supported by your school, you need to ensure that your students are aware of the issues and how to manage them. Further you need to ensure services you’re using fall within the guidelines and policies set out by your school.

If you are a principal you need to ensure that you have a policy framework in place within which your teachers can use these services.

For individual schools and whole jurisdictions, cloud computing can be an attractive model: you only pay for what you use, and you can upscale and downscale according to demand.

Service provision is subject to service level agreements and contractual arrangements as with any supplier of services so risk levels are low.

Cloud computing means that you don’t have to pay for IT expertise in-house as the service is supplied and managed externally. You are often choosing a service you are already familiar with (like Gmail, for example) so student and teacher acceptance is high and because you are using it as an enterprise service under a contract problems of uncontrolled advertising or adult content don’t arise.

Many well known IT brands are entering the cloud computing realm: Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM are a few examples. As cloud computing becomes more widespread it will impact on how we manage our information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure.

Most cloud computing applications are, and will be, browser based, with software running from the cloud, with no, or minimal, installation on the local computer itself. This will mean small internet-ready relatively cheap mobile devices like Netbooks and EeePCs - already being trialled by some states - will be part of the mix along with standard desktop and laptop computers.

Lower device costs means schools will get more for their infrastructure dollar, but this is likely to be offset by increased costs in wireless capability, connectivity, support and infrastructure. If the software applications and data is all online then an ‘always connected’ capability will be essential for teachers, students and administrators, as will ubiquitous wireless connections.

While cloud computing can solve some organisational IT needs, some services will be better left on local machines and/or running from local servers for performance and privacy reasons. For example, in some schools the LAN or WAN will have better speeds for running applications that require local processing power: think graphics, photo manipulation and animation.

Integration with existing in-house applications can be difficult as many cloud services are standalone and are provided ‘as is’.

For seamless administrative services and the ability to move and mashup your own data, cloud computing may not be the best solution. Mission critical services with high privacy needs – such as finance and human resources may also be best kept in-house. In summary, a shift to cloud computing may mean a greater variety of internet-ready devices being used, applications accessed from the web rather than running from local machines or servers, data stored in the cloud, and enterprise applications managed and hosted by third party service suppliers.

For teaching and learning it provide students and teachers with 24/7/365 access to teaching and learning activities and resources.

First published by Education Technology Solutions magazine