Elucidating the impact of cloud computing in education sector Benefits and Challenges

1. Elucidating the impact of cloud computing in education sector: Benefits and Challenges
Dr. T.K. Jain,Rajpal Choudhary
Singhania university,Pacheri Bari( Jhujhunu)
rajpal_choudhary2002@yahoo.com
ABSTRACT
This research aims toward a comprehensive
literature review for the analysis how
the cloud helps ensure that students,
teachers, faculty, parents, and staff have on-
demand access to critical information using
any device from anywhere. This review of
the literature and concurrent widespread
discussions with IT leaders suggests that
cloud computing is an important
development with the shift from mainframe
to client server based computing.
The objective of our research is to study and
analysis on Cloud computing and how it is
important for our education sector. In simple
terms cloud computing enables you to
access software applications, hardware, data
and computer processing power on the web,
rather than loading software onto your own
computer or school server.
The use of cloud computing in schools and
universities substantially increases
availability of necessary educational
computing services and applications to
students and educators through the
infrastructure it provides.
What is cloud computing?
Cloud computing is a broad term that
describes the shift from conventional
desktop based computing and storage
systems to services and data accessed
through the Internet. The ‘cloud’ is the
network where applications, data and
services are accessed online. Cloud
computing services are essentially any
service that can be “delivered and consumed
over the internet in real-time”. ‘Cloud
computing’ is the entire framework that
enables these services to exist and be
consumed. Cloud computing services are
offered at three different levels:
• Infrastructure as a service - A
service that includes storage, servers and
networks for IT use, with capacity that
can be scaled up or down when required.
• Platform as a service - Services that
allow developers to create applications,
regardless of the usual hardware and
infrastructure problems that hinder
development.
• Software as service - An application
that exists within a web-based interface,
with storage and interaction occurring
entirely within the cloud.
The software service level is most likely to
be used by consumers. Web-based email,
calendars, photo and video storage, social
networking sites, and applications offered by
providers like Google are enormously
popular. Emerging cloud applications
Include office productivity software, and
even complex, specialist tools such as
Photoshop. In the US, Health vault and
Google Health allow users to store and
update their medical records online, which
can be accessed by and shared with doctors,
health professionals and family.
Education: Why Cloud Computing?
There are a lot of good reasons why schools,
both in the lower and higher education
sectors, should adopt cloud computing and
embed such into their systems. In this
© International Journal of New Practices in Management and Engineering. 2012. Volume- 3 Issue -1

2. article, we are going to talk about the
different benefits, as well as some of the
disadvantages and limitations of using cloud
computing. However, it is unwise and
illogical to go on with the aforementioned
subjects without understanding the meaning
of the word ‘cloud computing. Briefly
defined, cloud computing has a lot to do
with the internet. In fact, the internet has
been referred to as ‘cloud’ in recent years
because, after all, everyone can access it.
Cloud computing has actually evolved from
the original concept of the internet, and its
purpose has been made broader. Basically,
cloud computing allows people to access the
internet and most – if not all – of its
resources anywhere and anytime.
Lawrence Cruz, a writer for Associated
Press, defined cloud computing (2011) in
less technical manner that ” cloud
computing is a collection of applications
and technologies which can be accessed
and manipulated by a large number of
users in real time”. Cloud computing will
enable a certain educational institution to
actually make use of the global internet
resources for data analysis and data storage
Furthermore, the world today is, quite
literally, run by the cloud and cloud-
connected technologies. The benefits of
cloud computing to the educational
institutions as provided by Mircea and
Andreescu (2011) are:
• Cloud computing allows institutions
to access real time information from
anywhere in the world in a matter of
seconds. In the field of education, this is
pretty important as it helps teachers and
learners in constantly updating their
stock of information.
• Cloud computing allows teachers
and learners to access applications and
other useful tools for free.
• Basically, this technology is a
particularly new one and, because of
this, it is not only efficient, it is also
environment-friendly.
• Because cloud computing allows for
interconnectivity, students are
exposed to openness. In other words,
they are able to experience and feel
what it is like in the real world. As
such, they will be able to learn things
more decently and more effectively
because the entire learning process is
facilitated by a teacher or a mentor.
The advantages mentioned above are
already enough to convince anyone why our
schools need to have cloud computing.
However, it must be sufficiently understood
that the main benefits of the cloud are to be
felt by the schools’ number one clients: the
learners. Basically, cloud computing will aid
the school attain its most crucial goal which
is the equal delivery of educational services
to each and every learner (1)Basically, cloud
computing will enable learners to formally
undergo education even without going to the
four-walled classrooms. For families who
travel a lot, cloud computing will allow their
children to travel with them, while
continually learning lessons, submitting
assignment, and getting grades.(2)
Education: Choices in the cloud
When you use Microsoft cloud services, you
choose whether you deploy on-premises,
have the software hosted as a service, or use
a combination of the two. This choice comes
with the freedom to adjust or modify your
infrastructure and deployment model as
service demands change.
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3. You choose how to best combine:
• Infrastructure as a service. Get on-
demand computing and storage to host,
scale, and manage applications and
services. Using Microsoft data centers
means you can scale with ease and speed
to meet the infrastructure needs of your
entire organization or individual
departments within it, globally or
locally.
• Platform as a service. The Windows
Azure cloud platform as a service
consists of an operating system, a fully
relational database, message-based
service bus, and a claims-based access
controller providing security-enhanced
connectivity and federated access for on-
premise applications. As a family of on-
demand services, the Windows Azure
platform offers your organization a
familiar development experience, on-
demand scalability, and reduced time to
market for your applications.
• Software as a service. Microsoft hosts
online services that provide your faculty,
staff, and students with a consistent
experience across multiple devices.
• Microsoft Live@edu provides students,
staff, faculty, and alumni long-term,
primary email addresses and other
applications that they can use to
collaborate and communicate online—
all at no cost to your education
institution.
• Exchange Hosted Services offers online
tools to help your organization protect
itself from spam and malware, satisfy
retention requirements for e-discovery
and compliance, encrypt data to preserve
confidentiality, and maintain access to
email during and after emergency
situations.
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
provides management solutions
deployed through Microsoft Office
Outlook or an Internet browser to help
your customers efficiently automate
workflows and centralize information.
• Office Web Apps provide on-demand
access to the web-based version of the
Microsoft Office suite of applications,
including Office Word, Office Excel,
and Office PowerPoint.
"This is a revolution," says Curtis Bonk, a
professor of education at Indiana University
and blogger on GETideas.org. "Education
doesn't have to take place with the teacher
front and center and students sitting in rows.
It can take place outside, under a tree
branch, on a boat or plane, in a grocery store
or while hiking, if you have an Internet
connection."
Education: CHALLENGES TO THE
CLOUD
Lynn McNally, who sits on the board of
directors of the K-12 technology leadership
body Consortium for School Networking
(CoSN), says cloud computing offers great
potential in education but not without
growing pains for everyone.
Challenges range from securing data in the
cloud to managing the large amounts of
instructional software used in schools (not
all of which can go into the cloud), to
getting adequate IT support in a world
where many school districts have as many as
900 devices per IT person, and overcoming
a shortage of dedicated IT and instructional
departments to help districts take a strategic
approach to the cloud. Although the cloud
has the potential to save school districts
money in IT support, the jury is still out on
that, McNally says.
"A lot of smaller school districts have been
supporting IT on the fly," says McNally,
who is also the technology and library
© International Journal of New Practices in Management and Engineering. 2012. Volume- 3 Issue -1

4. resource supervisor for Loudoun County
Public Schools in Virginia. "With the advent
of enterprise-level software-as-a-service,
that will have to stop." There's also the
challenge of equipping each student with a
device to access digital resources, not to
mention the need to train teachers using
public Web 2.0 tools in the cloud – such as
blogs and wikis – in how to make the most
of such resources.
"School districts need to be putting out
guidelines for their staff on how to use these
tools in a way that promotes 21st Century
learning but in a safe way," McNally says. "I
think there's a void there."
As more school districts avail themselves of
the cloud, the biggest challenge of all,
McNally says, is and will continue to be
securing reasonably priced bandwidth. K-12
districts can get very affordable broadband
in areas where government entities have
partnered with private service providers to
build the infrastructure, she says. But she
says broadband can be very costly in areas
where districts must rely solely on the
private sector.
Conclusion
Cloud services offer higher education and
research institutions the power to choose:
the opportunity to rethink which services are
needed to support education and research
and what will be the best way to deliver
those services. Many services are readily
available in the public cloud. Some services
need to be procured through the institution's
IT department. Only a few services will
require custom development, either alone or
in partnership with other institutions. The
final result will most likely be a loosely
coupled, customized arrangement consisting
of off-the-shelf systems and services based
on proven technology. Several CIOs have
predicted that higher education institutions
will get out of the game of running the
monolithic enterprise systems and will move
the finance, human resources, and student
systems into the cloud over the next five to
ten years[15]
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© International Journal of New Practices in Management and Engineering. 2012. Volume- 3 Issue -1