Issue with the assignment

I’m a little uncomfortable with the assignment for this week. It seems extremely IT-focused on data centres– IT vendors and integrators wanting to sell pre-fab solutions to institutions which happen to include educational institutions.

The HP solution made me laugh — a private cloud? It was a rack of servers you buy and install in your facility with virtual computing and desktop monitoring that would be available in any modern network setup. Nice branding sleight-of-hand. Note that in its K12 offering, HP (as an integrator) offers the BrainHoney LMS/CMS from Agilix. Are the other “instructional tools” offered in its solution cloud-based? Doesn’t look like it… there are a bunch of utilities and gadgets HP throws together as an integrator… perhaps with access to Microsoft’s LiveDrive cloud service… but Microsoft also emphasizes the use of its standard office suite.

I’m curious why we’re focusing on pure IT issues rather than educational ventures. What about educational-focused Software-as-a-Service like Brain Honey’s CMS? BrainHoney is free to use by educators, and it’s accessible through regular web browsers from anywhere. It seems a more cloud-based educational venture than a pure IT solution.

What about The JASON Project? It’s a completely cloud-based classroom management system and middle-school science curriculum with textbook content, games, videos that are all referenced to state (and provincial) education standards. It’s free to use and it provides easy access to high quality curricula, quizzes, lesson plans, assignment management to anyhow who chooses to use them to teach science.

I may be off base here if my classmates intend to include IT infrastructure analysis as part of their careers, but my expectation was to focus on educational ventures rather than IT ventures that happen to sell to educators.

Am I misunderstanding?

Posted in: Week 08: Files in the Cloud