I think that Education’s adoption of cloud based services is inevitable. As mentioned in this week’s OER: they reduce the cost for schools, IT departments, and users. The concern that many people will continue to have is in the protection and privacy of the individual users and the intellectual property created and stored. Once people […]
Continue reading Week 6, Activity #9 Posted in: Week 06:
No doubt some of you also noticed this announcement from Google today regarding its foray into open-source course building tools for education. If you missed the announcement or would like to learn more, you can follow the link below: http://edudemic.com/2012/09/google-course-builder Cheers, Scott.
Continue reading Google Open Source Course Builder Posted in: Blog Café, Week 02: The Edtech Marketplace
How could anyone, even Google, improve on PowerPoint as a course building tool? 😉
Seriously, Google rarely launches duds, but I’m worried about this one. I’m looking forward to some critical reviews from our MET-resident experts…
Hi Scott,
Thank you for sharing that link. I actually was unaware that Google was launching a course builder but after reading the article and taking a quick glance at it, I am hesitant that it will offer something better than many other open-source platforms already out there. In any case, I am interested to see what type of response it gets.
Google has been playing in this sandbox for a bit. GApps integrates well with a number of Learning Management Systems, including Moodle, and last year, they released a product called OpenClass together with Pearson.
Don;t know how this new course builder fits into the ecosystem, but it wouldn’t be the first time Google has released a number of different products that overlap.
I had a look at it but it looks like I will need a JavaScript refresher to make any use of it–ughh!
Hi Scott, Thanks for sharing. I checked it out. I hope that they refine things to be less tech-heavy. It would be more attractive for someone like myself, who would use this in a heartbeat, but not if it means I need to know HTML or Java, etc. I guess we will see what happens. Eva
Thanks for sharing that Scott. I can not see this being too popular with the majority of learning professionals if it potentially requires Javascript and Python skills, these are not something you can just pickup in 5 minutes. Out of curiosity however I joined their Power Searching with Google course to see what it was like. It was very clear, easily to follow and had multiple delivery formats (text & video) for the content which was nice and I have to admit I did learn a few new things 🙂
A few years ago Open Source was a real buzz – the future of software well beyond education. While the movement is still very active, the breakthrough promise hasn’t been realized. Yet. There are many who believe that the critical mass of openness – including new dimensions such as Open Data, Open Licenses, Open Innovation, Open Educational […]
Continue reading Open Source Posted in: Emerging Markets Poll
I think open source is a wonderful concept because it makes programs, etc, accessible to everyone. Thu,s allowing for more equity and removing access barriers. However, it is difficult to keep programs and software like this going without the generosity of people’s time, resources and donations. All of which are often hard to come-by.
Open source does not necessarily mean ‘coded by volunteers’. Many popular open source projects are almost entirely designed and created by large, for-profit companies who do the work in-house. Openoffice is a good example. At a big company like Sun Microsystems, it made more financial sense for them to design an office suite that suited their needs in-house rather than pay high costs of paying for licenses for thousands of workers. They had a number of other major players as partners (IBM, Apache…) that also contributed code and lowered costs but I don’t think their primary focus was particularly altruistic. (In fact, chipping away at the MS Empire could have provided some impetus as well.) Some companies offer an open source version of a product, then another that includes some proprietary code. Google Chrome is a good example (Chromium is the open source version). They get to make a contribution to the community, save some costs by crowdsourcing some of the technical work porting to other platforms and so on, and if anyone comes up with a really great idea, they can use it to make both versions of the product better (depending on the license.)
The interesting thing about open source software is that it that it has its roots in academia and as such it might expect educators to embrace the concept and products wholeheartedly. How this has not been the case because the prevailing conditions of the times did not support its widespread use.
First and foremost if one considers a purely Darwinian approach to software adoption then the traditional profit driven capitalist environment that we operate in may place open source software as the proverbial fish out of water when compared to its closed source for profit counterpart. For the most part the concept was new and the old guards i.e. the decision makers in were more comfortable with comfortable to go with what they were familiar with.
However in the that we are living the business is changing in some areas of the new cyber frontier and companies such as Google have proven that one does not have to sell a closed product to make money. Whereas Linux did not penetrate the pc world much android has taken a dominant place in the new mobile computing world. I believe that effort such as these become popular the world will be more comfortable with the concept and open source products will be accepted more readily than now.
I think this is where one can learn the language and take advantage of it….we just have to teach ourselves and teach our students to understand….
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Peggy Lawson 7:21 pm on October 13, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Group 6 did a great job for me of distinguishing between the 3 major categories of Cloud Computing – SaaS. IaaS, and PaaS (http://cloudlearning.weebly.com/what-is-cloud-learning.html). In my own school division, I’ve seen increasing use of Saas, but I know that many school divisions have really moved towards that direction, using Google Apps, Microsoft services, or other cloud tools as critical players – for example for providing all students and sometimes staff with email and other essential services. I can see this becoming more prevalent. While I’ve personally heard of few divisions using the cloud for infrastructure or platform, and my own job is on the instructional, not infrastructure side of technology, I can certainly see huge economical benefits for doing so, under the right conditions. One obstacle, I think, will be that getting over that reluctance of giving up local control (not withstanding the security and other cautions listed by Team 6).
Peggy
C. Ranson 6:19 am on October 14, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
After reading this weeks posted information and articles it appears that “the future
is cloudy”.
This weeks group provided an excellent summary of cloud technology and identified the fundamental components to a better understand how it is integrated into the complex world of technology and the current issues related to this new market. There appears to be both advantages and disadvantages of cloud-computing. The benefits are cost and efficiency, being closely intertwined. For an organization the capital costs can be reduced with the implementation of cloud technology through buying virtual server time and storage space, IT departments transition into an operational role and the physical space and expense of housing servers no longer exists. For students cloud-computing increases accessibility, adds mobility, improves availability and integrity of software applications, research materials and storage capacity. For faculty it provides accessibility to virtual space for delivery of educational curriculum, customization of individual courses and provides department and campus unity. For administration it will provide standardization of resources and data management, reduced costs, reduce the need for IT staff, and supports greater virtualization. Of course, there are liabilities with the cloud market and its development being in the early stages. Lack of definitive standards, the concern of lock-in of data, confidentiality of data, where cloud servers reside and regulations, licensing and cost models. The implementation of could-computing in the near future will be linked to organizational decision-makers and the organization’s level of technology awareness.
Catherine