5. Discussion & Activities

Here is a recap of all the activities for the week.

Welcome

1. For the first activity we would like you to write a brief reflection on our ETEC 522 blog on how you are currently using cloud storage and cloud computing.

Switching to Cloud Computing

2. We would like you to reflect on the question “What are the benefits to converting a business or school district to cloud computing?” Please use the ETEC 522 blog to post your reflection. Afterwards, take a few minutes to add some of your thoughts to our wiki; this is where we will come up with a group answer to this question.

Interoperability & Usability

3. The background information provided above along with the following three online articles should prepare you for your task:

The Context

In this experience, you are invited to continue playing the role of EVA.  In this exercise, you are to assume that you are in a decision making position in a large school district.  You have a budget and a mandate to manage and administer data storage system wide. Your users are demanding vastly greater amounts of data storage: growing numbers of teachers are blending face-to-face classroom instruction with online learning environments. Students and staff are demanding mobile access to data. Your in-house data centre is already operating beyond at maximum capacity. Cloud storage appears to be a cost-effective solution that can grow as your demands grow.

Instructions

There are two parts to this exercise:

  • Evaluate one specific cloud service from the three choices below in which you employ your EVA skills developed so far in this course (Part A)
  • Examine one case study from the three choices below in which you reflect on similarities and differences to your organization or context (Part B)

Use the background information provided on this page, along with your growing venture and market analysis skills gained so far in this course, to complete Part A and B.

VoiceThread Conversations

The learning artifact container for this experience will be VoiceThread. This free Web 2.0 tool allows for conversations to take place around media. There is a separate VoiceThread for Part A and Part B (The link is next to the title). Please visit each and follow the instructions provided on the first slide.

It takes less than a minute to start using VoiceThread; simply sign up with an email address.  (Note: You will need a microphone or headset-mic in order to make voice comments. If you don’t have one, you can still comment using text but it is not quite as engaging.)

Part A – Cloud Storage Options

Detailed information:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXgOQUOqm2A

Detailed information: Google Apps for Education

Detailed information: Windows Azure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_3_gw6YecU

Part B – Case Studies

  • Bloomington Public School District – “The IlliniCloud, a nonprofit consortium launched two years ago, is made of three data centers across the state that allows school districts as well as private and parochial K-12 schools to share hardware, applications, services and IT support.” (CDW, 2011)  (more information here)
  • New South Wales Education Department – “New South Wales Department of Education (DET) estimated for them to host an online test for 65,000 students simultaneously would require a A$200,000 investment in server infrastructure. In 2010, they trialled an online science exam hosted by Microsoft Azure that went out to 65,000 students in 650 schools simultaneously. Paying A$40 per hour for 300 Microsoft Azure Servers, DET estimated the cost of hosting the online exam for one day was just A$500.” (Microsoft, Inc., 2011)
  • Edmonton Public Schools – “Terry Korte of Edmonton Public Schools: We wanted to build a collaborative learning community in which students could work together easily on projects with their peers and also interact more productively with teachers.” (Google, Inc., 2011)

Uses for Education

4. In a few different versions online, people have created images that combine Bloom’s Taxonomy with cloud-based digital applications. Notice that each level of the pyramid is a skill (or a verb, as Prensky put it), and that certain applications lend themselves to certain verbs.

from http://www.usi.edu/distance/bdt.htm

Your challenge is to make your way to our group’s Lino. On it, either add to the nouns of a verb (add cloud-based tools to go with a skill), or add a new skill / verb that is important in education but has not yet been listed. You do not need to register to use this Lino. The Lino is free for you to add and place stickies where you wish – anonymously or by name, if you choose.

Cloud Collaboration

5. Lastly, we welcome you to add examples of cloud storage providers and cloud computing providers to our wiki site.

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