Monday, May 7, 2018

Benefits of Cloud Computing in Education


Benefits of Cloud Computing in Education 

Among the many organizations that find cloud computing systems useful are educational institutions. Cloud computing has simplified the admission and administration processes, as well as improved general staff communication. The following diagram depicts the simplification that has emerge as a result of cloud computing in education.




In the traditional deployment model, all Information Technology resources (services and tools) are housed and managed in-house. These services and tools may be migrated to the cloud and consumed directly over the Internet either as fully functional applications (SaaS), development platforms (PaaS) or raw computing resources (IaaS) (Yadav 2014). The diagram below depicts how the different categories of university users may consume cloud services.





Educational institutions can benefit in terms of both cost reduction and efficiency by outsourcing infrastructure, platform or software as a service.
Cloud computing, despite its hype, is being widely deployed, with its dynamic scalability and usage of virtualized resources, in many organizations for several applications. It is envisioned that, in the near future, cloud computing will have a significant impact on the educational and learning environment, enabling their own users (i.e., learners, instructors, and administrators) to perform their tasks effectively with less cost by utilizing the available cloud-based applications offered by the cloud service providers (Alabbadi, 2011).
Leading cloud providers like Microsoft, Google and Amazon have recognized the importance of adjusting their computing services specifically to the needs of educational institutions. These include customized software packages at low prices that more institutions can afford. For instance, Microsoft have been reforming education for more than two decades through its services like Office 365 for Education, Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), Exchange Hosted Services, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Office Web Apps.

In another instance, Google Apps for education is another widely used platform for outsourcing free web-based email, calendar and documents for collaborative study. Google has initiated two important campaigns for introducing improvements in the education sector. The first initiative is Chromebooks for Education and the other initiative is Tablets with Google Play for Education. Tablets with Google Play for Education enable educators to smoothly implement the latest technology solutions into classrooms and make useful apps available to their students.

Truth be told, the introduction cloud computing in education has helped in alleviating the problems associated with traditional education system. These problems include but not limited to; the lack of infrastructure and if available, then maintenance of that infrastructure and other issue like procuring and maintaining a wide range of hardware and software which require ample, ongoing investment and the skills to support them. Cloud computing be a solution to all these issues. The cloud guarantees that students, instructors, personnel, guardians, and staff have access to basic data utilizing any gadget from anyplace (Neha Lad 2016). Cloud computing offer numerous benefits as compared to the traditional education system. The Benefits of Cloud Computing for Institutions and Students include:
§  Personalized Learning: students can access a wide array of resources and software tools that suit their learning styles and interests.
§  Reduced Costs:  Help institutes to reduce costs and accelerate the use of new technologies to meet evolving educational needs. Students can use applications like MS Office for free without having to purchase.
§  Accessibility:  From anywhere one can login and access the information.
§  No Extra Infrastructure: Colleges and governments are now free from wasting time on worrying about the buildings, labs, teachers etc.
§  User Friendly: It is easy to understand and easy to operate

In as much as cloud computing is offering low cost flexible solutions to the issues associated with traditional education system, much concern should place on Security, privacy, reliability, Vendor lock and failures.

Friday, April 6, 2018

History of cloud computing

A brief history of cloud computing
1950-1969
In the 1950s mainframe computers were huge, occupying entire rooms. Due to the cost of buying and maintaining mainframes, organizations couldn’t afford to purchase one for each user. The solution was “time sharing” in which multiple users shared access to data and CPU time. The term “time sharing” is the premise of cloud computing.
Computer scientist John McCarthy initiates the first project to use a time-sharing system, which allows several people to use a single, central, computer at the same time.
In 1969 J. C. R. Licklider, a computer scientist, developed ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) the direct predecessor to the internet. His vision was for everyone to be interconnected and accessing programs and data at any site, (very much like cloud computing.)
1970 – 1989
During this era, IBM released an operating system called VM that allowed admins to have multiple virtual systems, or “Virtual Machines” (VMs) on a single physical node. The VM operating system took the 50s “time sharing” model to the next level and most of the basic functions of any virtualization software that you see nowadays can be traced back to this early VM operating system.
Full time-sharing solutions were available by the early 1970s on such platforms as Multics (on GE hardware), Cambridge CTSS, and the earliest UNIX ports (on DEC hardware)
1990 - 1999
Telecommunications companies begin to offer virtual private network, (VPN) services, enabling businesses to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network.
Professor Ramnath Chellappa first coins the term 'cloud computing.'
2000s
In 2002, Amazon created Amazon Web Services (AWS), providing an advanced system of cloud services from storage to computation.
Amazon introduced the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) in 2006 as a commercial web service. The EC2 let small companies rent computers on which they could run their own computer applications.
Somewhere in 2009, Google and Microsoft entered the playing field. The Google App Engine brought low-cost computing and storage services, and Microsoft followed suit with Windows Azure.
NASA's OpenNebula, enhanced in the RESERVOIR European Commission funded project, became the first open-source software for deploying private and hybrid clouds, and for the federation of clouds.
Among the many organizations that find cloud computing systems useful are educational institutions. Cloud computing has simplified the admission and administration processes, as well as improved general staff communication. The following diagram depicts the simplification that has emerge as a result of cloud computing in education.

Source: http://www.ijircce.com/upload/2014/february/21_Role.pdf

References
Alabbadi, M. M. (2011, September). Cloud computing for education and learning: Education and learning as a service (ELaaS). In Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL), 2011 14th International Conference on (pp. 589-594). IEEE.
Hasson, J. (2008). Cloud computing is for the birds. FierceCIO. http://www.fiercecio.com/story/cloud-computing-birds/2008-10-11
Hosting, C. C. (2014). Cloud Computing in Education: Introducing Classroom Innovation. Whitepaper by http://www. crucial. com. au, 2-7.
Johnson, B. (2008). Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman. The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.
Katz, R. N., Goldstein, P. J., & Yanosky, R. (2009). Demystifying cloud computing for higher education. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research Bulletin19, 1-13.
Mell, P., & Grance, T. (2011). The NIST definition of cloud computing.
Yadav, K. (2014). Role of cloud computing in education. International Journal of Innovative Research in Computer and Communication Engineering, 2(2), 3108-3112.



Why cloud computing

CLOUD COMPUTING IN EDUCATION 

Alhaj Yusif Amadu


Cloud computing is a new technology that has changed or shift the paradigm of computing specifically in education. The cloud computing is as secure as your bank account. Companies offering these computing services are called cloud providers and typically charge for cloud computing services based on usage, similar to how you are billed for water or electricity at home Cloud providers are companies who provide computing services and charge for cloud computing services they provide based on usage, just like billed for electricity, gas or water at home.

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The advent of technology has greatly impacted industry development to the extent of affecting the most traditional systems like education. The educational sector has transmogrified over the last few years following the general change of people habits and the worlds job market structure. The emergence of cloud computing technology has taken the worldwide classrooms by storm and reshaped most of the processes related to learning, teaching and administration. With its built-in elasticity and scalability for delivering on-demand information technology (IT) services to users in a pay-per-use basis, Cloud computing has emerged as an Internet-based computing paradigm. Thus, it acts as the epicenter of business developments and existing IT technologies (i.e. Virtualization, Grid Computing, Utility Computing, and Web Services).

Unfortunately, there is abundance of definitions for “cloud computing” in the literature, with hype and divergent viewpoints, leading to a non-standard definition. The “U.S” National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) definition is adopted. NIST defines cloud computing as a ‟model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models”

There are basically three service models or types of cloud computing, where in all models the consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or applications. The three service models are:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Compute, storage, networking, and other elements (security, tools) are provided by the IaaS provider via public Internet, VPN, or dedicated network connection. Users own and manage operating systems, applications, and information running on the infrastructure and pay by usage (“Pay-as-you-go”). The best-known examples are Google Apps for Education and Microsoft Office365 which provide communication and office applications such as email and spreadsheets.

Platform as a Service (PaaS): In the PaaS models, cloud providers deliver a computing platform, typically including operating system, programming-language execution environment, database, and web server. Application developers can develop and run their software solutions on a cloud platform without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software layers. On a lighter note, one needs to remember the traditional computing model where each application managed locally required hardware, an operating system, a database, middleware, Web servers, and other software. One also needs to remember the team of network, database, and system management experts that are needed to keep everything up and running. With cloud computing, these services are now provided remotely by cloud providers under this layer. Examples of PaaS include Microsoft's Azure Services Platform (Microsoft, 2012), Salesforce's Force.com development platform, Google Apps Engine, Amazon's Relational Database Services and Rackspace Cloud services.

Software as a Service (SaaS): In the software as a service (SaaS) model, users gain access to application software and databases. Cloud providers manage the infrastructure and platforms that run the applications. SaaS is sometimes referred to as "on-demand software" and is usually priced on a pay-per-use basis or using a subscription fee. In the SaaS model, cloud providers install and operate application software in the cloud and cloud users access the software from cloud clients. For example, Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud; organizations can use this infrastructure to run Linux servers on virtual machines and scale up usage as required.


References
Alabbadi, M. M. (2011, September). Cloud computing for education and learning: Education and learning as a service (ELaaS). In Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL), 2011 14th International Conference on (pp. 589-594). IEEE.
Hasson, J. (2008). Cloud computing is for the birds. FierceCIO. http://www.fiercecio.com/story/cloud-computing-birds/2008-10-11
Hosting, C. C. (2014). Cloud Computing in Education: Introducing Classroom Innovation. Whitepaper by http://www. crucial. com. au, 2-7.
Johnson, B. (2008). Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman. The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.
Katz, R. N., Goldstein, P. J., & Yanosky, R. (2009). Demystifying cloud computing for higher education. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research Bulletin19, 1-13.
Mell, P., & Grance, T. (2011). The NIST definition of cloud computing.
Yadav, K. (2014). Role of cloud computing in education. International Journal of Innovative Research in Computer and Communication Engineering, 2(2), 3108-3112.