Week 8- Discussion #2: Changing to Clouds
What are the benefits to converting a business or school district to cloud computing?
Here are some benefits to converting school district to cloud computing.
1. All about $$$
I always carry my external hard drive, because I don’t want to save all my work (including notes, lessons, templates, ideas, projects, marks, and other confidential items) in the school server. This could be exposed to public or could be lost if the school board deletes work by accident or by purpose (to “clean up” every year). I’ve seen most of my colleagues carrying either their laptops/netbooks/tabletPCs or external hard drive just like me. Considering that an external hard drive with size 1TB or bigger costs $100 or more each, clouds save more money if we take a look at the bigger picture.
In addition, cloud computing also saves my energy to carry heavy IT equipment to my work and back home. I used to take my 14″ laptop with me to school, but after I changed it to my external hard drive, my bag became lighter. Now, as I use cloud-based apps more often these days, my bag is even lighter than when I carried the external hard drive.
2. No worry about losing work or the location of work
As long as you don’t forget your username and password, you don’t need to worry about where you saved your work. It used to be one of the biggest concerns I had when I saved my work in the school computer (no problem when I used my own laptop). Sometimes all the work I save in the school computer disappear when the school board did server maintenance.
Some people worry about losing data or work because of the Internet getting suddenly disconnected. However, most of the cloud-based apps “autosave” work every few seconds/minutes, so I think losing data is not a huge concern.
3. More space
Cloud-based apps have much more space to save work and upload files.
4. No program needs to be purchased
For the programs like Prezi or Glogster, you don’t need to purchase clip arts or MS Office programs (e.g. PowerPoint). Everything that you need (including fonts, images, and other cool features) is there already, so you just need to sign up. It’s a great idea for students who can’t afford to purchase desktop programs.
Deb
Posted in: Week 08: Files in the Cloud
bcourey 3:55 am on October 29, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Good points made Deb! Has anyone wondered what would happen if all of that data suddenly became unavailable because of some kind of server disruption wherever the data is stored? Or perhaps the companies that “own” the servers suddenly become “owners” of the data? I don’t mean to be paranoid, but are we too trusting that the cloud is the safest place to put all of our institutional information? It is one thing to lose our pictures and our blog posts, but yet another to lose educational/health/financial data. Does anyone remember the wee scare we had when Yahoo gave Delicious up? Didn’t some of us panic and move over to Diigo for a spell?
khenry 6:50 am on October 29, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Deb and Courey,
Echoing Courey, Deb raised some good points indeed. I have also experienced benefits of not having to walk with my computer, harddrive et al., as have students but woe be unto us when the connection isn’t working. It really disrupts the schedule and even though we can find alternatives, at times we are left deep in the mud.
Like Courey I have wondered what would happen if one day the net just crashed and all that information was lost. Along with such considerations for storage and safety, data ownership is paramount. Think of even the new changes to facebook http://mashable.com/2009/02/16/facebook-tos-privacy/. Very important considerations!
Kerry-Ann
Deb Kim 8:47 am on October 29, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Good point, Brenda and Kerry-Ann.
While reading some of the coursemates’ posts, I also wondered if I was “too trusting that the cloud is the safest place”. I discover myself to be relying on cloud-based apps more than offline programs. I’d be frustrated if server disruption happens all of a sudden and the connection isn’t working. That’s probably why I started carrying my harddrive with me again (but once in a while) and save my work in it.
Deb
ashleyross 1:15 am on October 30, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Deb,
I recently posted a reply to Tamara after she made similar comments on security in the cloud. I won’t repeat everything that I wrote there but my thoughts are that Google has a lot more money to spend on data security and backup infrastructure than I do so I feel pretty confident that they will never lose my information as long as they suddenly don’t go out of business. 🙂 They do provide you with the ability to download your email and documents though, so I suppose I could start doing that if I ever got nervous. 🙂
I also use cloud storage through Dropbox ( http://www.dropbox.com/) though, which I guess is exactly the same as having an extra hard drive. I alternate between my PC and my laptop and so each of those has a synced copy of my Dropbox in addition to the one that is stored on on their servers. So at any time I have the information stored in three places. That way if I lose a computer or they disappear, I still have other copies. I like the convenience of always having access to my data, but having it backed up in multiple locations is also great. What I really like though is that I can actually access my Dropbox through my mobile phone and download files if I need them.
Ashley