As an innovative educator I've been an early adopter of cloud computing. I remember when I first discovered "Writely" at a conference several years ago. I was so excited that there was a tool that not only let you write online, but it also allowed you to collaborate. This was huge! No more issues of version control, and because it was free, no more needing to buy word processing software. Google caught on quick and swooped up Writely which is now known as Google Docs. As Google does, they took it even further and developed spreadsheets, presentations, drawing, forms and more. If that wasn't enough, they made a special free version of all this for education. Fantastic! This was when I first developed a deep appreciation of "The Cloud." In short, when we speak of “the cloud” what we are saying is we are using the internet – the Cloud – to access programs that are not stored on your computer. It is a fundamental shift away from the traditional way of using your PC because you no longer need software installed on your computer. In fact, you no longer need a dedicated computer. Instead, software, and everything you create with it, lives in the cloud with hosted services like email, photo sharing (Flickr), video sharing (YouTube), file sharing (DropBox and Google Docs), or social media (Facebook and Twitter).
In education, many schools and districts stuck in bureaucratic red tape (real or imagined) are dreadfully behind the times. Unfortunately, they have not caught on and they're needlessly wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on software apps when there are alternatives available for free, for all. The other benefit is when you work in the cloud, students and staff no longer need to have a dedicated computer. This is yet another thing that many schools needlessly struggle with. Some are relying on outdated models or using outdated research about the importance of 1:1 laptop ownership that was based on conditions that existed in the days before cloud computing was an option.
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