Elucidating the impact of cloud computing in education sector: Benefits and ChallengesDr. 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

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 cloudWhen 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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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

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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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