10.+Evaluation+and+Predictions


 * Evaluation**

Cloud computing in education has the potential to assist in the financial restructuring needed in the current economic climate. Even maintaining the current level of technical support personnel without hosting a client server environment would save money by eliminating the need to host an IT infrastructure with servers for data storage, numerous licenses for software as well as the need to refresh and provide technical service. This solution is already encouraging the increase in knowledge of technology for teachers and faculty all over the world. The major factors which should be measured and monitored closely are:


 * //Availability/reliability of the resource:// Any IT solution is held to a certain standard to be online and available for its users anytime. With the cloud solution, the underlying technology for the cloud vendor of host must be robust and consistent. Of the current cloud environments used in education, namely Google Docs, educators and business people have a high regard for the service. Google, as a reputable service is a good solution for schools. Our group agrees other companies will follow this model for fee based and open sources solutions.


 * //Cloud computing vendor service level support:// Using a cloud solution exclusively, leads to situation where students and teachers are at the mercy of the host (i.e. Google or other). The administration in education should be sure to work closely with cloud providers to address their concerns especially when high profile companies are involved.


 * //Support/criteria for tablets and other devices accessing the cloud:// Current technical personnel should be prepared to instruct teachers and learners how to access their cloud environment. The implications of all interactions in the cloud should be clear and there should be acceptable use policies in place.


 * //Student/teacher training:// Cloud computing gives rise to the need for teaching/learning support as well as instructional design and implementation assistance available so that teachers are able to instruct their students on best practices for their interaction in the cloud.


 * Predictions**

The "cloud" definitely has a place in the future of education. In addition to saving money by eliminating the need to host servers and supply software, the cloud enables education administrators and teachers to implement programs creating a paperless environment in education. Publishers are now seeing that authors are able to become published independently and utilize electronic distribution of their text used in education as well as other industries. Another benefit of the virtual environment is to share and utilize resources with other schools and teachers around the country and all over the world. This video below shows how cloud services are used today for full capabilities to create, edit, and store documents in a cloud in addition to meeting the needs for software and storage. This will begin to eliminate the need for PCs and laptops all together by allowing teachers and learners to access their content from anywhere using their tablets and other mobile devices. The prediction is that with more capabilities for our mobile devices and tablets, we are moving closer to exclusively using virtual hosts (or clouds) for our documents, email, music, and academic property if we are willing to operate fully in the cloud.

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