Benefits of the cloud for a school?
Recently in our school district, we have a had a change in policy in regards to student files and information. We are now required to hold on to field trip forms for 50 years. Yes, you read that correctly. Also, any assignments, tests or other materials with student identification on it is to be kept for 5 years. Interims or progress reports are also to be kept. Then of course, there are report cards and G4 files on every single student in the school system. Specifically, in accordance with having to keep the field trip forms, our school board has had to come up with a space to house these files. With the cost of maintenance of the physical building, along with the human clerical hours to keep in an orderly manner, it seems the logical solution would be to electronically keep these files.However, logic and school boards don’t always seem to be co-existent.
The benefits of converting a school district to cloud computing is very logical when it comes down to cost and space. Security and privacy are also concerns for data storage but again, not having physical files in a physical space along with the advancement of online security argue for cloud computing as well.
Posted in: Week 08: Files in the Cloud
Angela Novoa 5:48 am on October 26, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Interesting post. In Chile I have not heard about a project of converting a school district into could storing. However, there is a network of teachers that allows them to upload all the documents they use for their classes (e.g. plans, rubrics of evaluation, assessments, etc) through a Moodle Site. Generally these documents are related to the integration of a technology in instruction. By sharing this information, teachers from different locations can replay an activity in their own context (although I think that in some cases they should consider modifying these activities according to the needs of their students).
Angela.
jenaca 6:20 am on October 26, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Wow! 50 Years is a very long time, that seems crazy to me! It definitely sounds like your school would benefit from converting to cloud because of all the files you are required to keep. I’m wondering if it is in your school districts future for this conversion?
Jenaca
jarvise 10:57 am on October 26, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Your post made me think of our CPP (career and program planning) program, where students get a folder (physical) in grade 9 and start filling in portions, and then this folder follows them through high school. Problem: in high school, the students have multiple teachers. Therefore, who is responsible for keeping hold of the folder? At our school, the TA (teacher advisor, homeroom teacher) keeps the folder. usually. No one in high school really seems to do anything with them. It becomes a dormant file that stays with the TA for the year, and then hopefully gets passed to the next TA for the following year. It would make SO MUCH SENSE for this system to be digitized and cloud-based. You could set it up with a tool like a google calendar that notifies the student when they should be revisiting and updating.
You also made me think about how much school data is ALREADY in the cloud, based on the file saving practices of individual teachers. I exclusively use google docs for word processing, so what does that tell you about how much of my planning, tests, etc are already in the cloud?
50 years? Seriously? It seems that the cost of doing this would outweigh the cost of any possible lawsuit arising out of the loss of the documents.
Emily
bcourey 12:58 pm on October 26, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
In Ontario we are trying out e-Portfolios for student to maintain in the cloud for their entire school experience, volunteer experience, extracurricular etc…so that they can use this in future resume-building. It is brand new, and I still need to find out where the server will be – I expect that it is with D2L whose server is exclusively in Ontario. We have to keep transcripts for all students for 55 years – but for field trips? Interesting- sounds like protection against future litigious actions by students as to what might happen on a field trip!
Deb Giesbrecht 5:06 pm on October 26, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Wow! That really makes you think what do we really need and what is just taking up space. I went to my google docs the other day and found old assignments from a couple of years ago – does this really need to take up storage space on some server some where? Really?
Everton Walker 8:09 pm on October 26, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Cloud computing fits your situation as it won’t be long before you are out of space. Why do you need to keep those files that long? Do you think this policy will be reviewed soon?
Everton
themusicwoman 11:46 am on November 2, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I can only hope that the district thought through this policy carefully. But of course I’m cynical and instead think that the powers that be in charge of our education system are woefully out of touch with teachers and the reality of teaching. Some teachers have speculated that holding on to these forms is for insurance purposes. Honestly, I can understand holding onto them for a certain amount of time but certainly not 50 years and certainly not in physical form.
Thanks for the comments. This post seemed to generate a lot of comments even if we’re a little off topic.