Discussion: Cloud Memory refers to the opportunity of mining any history of related events that are stored on the web.
523 Inspiration: In the case of education such events could be a vast eportfolio of everything you have read and created since early childhood, including a mapping of your learning styles and abilities. The field of “learning analytics” imagines that institutions will do the mining, but when considered from a mobile perspective, Cloud Memory might be more beneficially owned by the learner, with the mining operations serving to bring them new and better opportunities to learn.
A very strong, traditional part of my professional Self does not like working on GoogleDocs simultaneously with colleagues as much as I it does not want to be able to access work files from home – or anywhere else except my office during regular working hours, for that matter. While I appreciate Cloud Memory – public, private, hybrid, or community – for reliable, omnipresent data access, I hate it because it tempts me to work when I should play, or vice versa. I also ponder questionable security, storage, and privacy policies for valuable personal artifacts. Cloud memory is intuitive and forgiving as it acts as a safety net for personal mismanagement, like forgetfulness or digital illiteracy. Prior to Cloud Computing, I recall various strategies like storing information on USB sticks or sending email back and forth to oneself attempted to harness the power of nascent technology. (I confess that I have fossilized many of these early digital habits which likely weaken my existing digital literacy as I continue to rely on inefficient tech strategies. How to break these habits?) The Cloud offers such a stark contrast to inefficient elementary practices that failing to upgrade one’s virtual habits to use the Cloud may be detrimental to one’s personal and professional health in the sense that they would forever be working harder, not smarter. Individuals obsolete to the workforce may never update their skill sets to explore the notion of Clouds as well as what could be stored in them. My favorite example of a hidden gem using Cloud memory is WayBackMachine (https://archive.org/web/web-advancedsearch.php), which to my amazement is now a downloadable App in addition to being a website that has archived the internet. Nothing is lost, nothing is deleted- except, of course, for that pre-Cloud document lost in transition from emails to USBs during final revisions…
Cloud memory certainly offers some great potential to, like Steve mentioned, track progress, showcase success, and demonstrate growth. It also provides the opportunity to cater to education and development based on the individual. The cloud will always come with privacy concerns but equally concerning and less discussed is the carbon footprint of cloud storage. More cloud storage means more server locations that have high energy requirements to keep the servers running, huge water usage and waste to control the temperatures, and there’s a significant amount of non-renewable resources needed for the specialized components in the machines themselves. While digital storage removes the strain on the forestry industry and paper waste, it could be argued that cloud storage’s environmental impact is much worse.
I feel the impact of cloud memory on mobile technology is under appreciated. It’s moved them from being small, temporary storage units, to devices being able to access nearly unlimited content. Something like photos are changing in their impact: instead of backing up images regularly and keeping only recent and/or very important images on the device, users cannot easily access decades of image history. The use of this to share, archive data or access important documents is fundamentally different now. Streaming services are built on cloud methods, moving users from hoarding media to using it on demand.
Cloud usage also makes the actual device largely indifferent. If a person loses their phone or upgrades, cloud tools make this a relatively benign event. There is a continuum of usage and purpose that wouldn’t be present if every technical upgrade was a full reset of user data. I can access my email history through all devices fundamentally the same way, even if the messages were received multiple iterations of technology in the past.
For education, I think these tools can help break down the compartmentalization that goes on: between school and personal life, between grades and even classes. Part of the limitation for school work is often that it is apparently just a task to be assessed, and has no longer term application. The ability to seamlessly bring in something that a student has worked on for years, add to and assess in the context of a class, then keep active for future use (in school and otherwise) could really blur the distinctions between education and the cliché of “the real world.”
Cloud memory not only sounds cool, but it also offers some very cool opportunities that I have not reflected upon before. A vast portfolio, a way to hone in on learning opportunities, track progress, and create opportunities … it all sounds quite amazing. Mixed in there are concerns about privacy, the pressure that comes with knowing that activities are recorded and recallable, and the potential misuse of this data at the hands of corporations or governments. Yet the opportunity remains intriguing. I don’t know where I would go with this, or if I actually think it’s a good idea, but it is certainly interesting.