Doug Johnson, DJ. (2009). Computing in the clouds. Iste online journal, 37(2009/2010), Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Publications/LL/LLIssues/Volume3720092010/DecemberJanuaryNo4/Computing_in_the_Clouds.htm
This Ejournal was cool for someone who knows very little about how computers and the web work. I am one of those people who have very little knowledge of how the whole Email, Internet, Web, and anything to do with computers really work. This article shows how to use the “Cloud” which is the word for Google Docs work. One does not need an expensive computer set up to be able to use the “Cloud”, the Cloud is free, so that can free up space on your computer. The more space you have the less you need to buy for storage, the less storage the less expensive computer you need. The really neat thing about the cloud is that schools do not have to blow their yearly budget on expensive computer. This will allow schools to purchase more computers than before. Now every child can have a computer, as long as they use the cloud.
Question 1 is how someone starts to use the cloud. Someone would have to start to move all their files to the Cloud. Computer. Rather than using a full-scale laptop computer, I've been using a 10-inch ASUS 1000HA netbook that cost about $350. The smaller keyboard and screen size took some getting used to, but now I can work on the computer for long periods of time. The speed is acceptable, the battery life is good, and the wireless connectivity is fast.
E-mail. Both my school's Microsoft Exchange system and my personal Gmail accounts already have robust online e-mail clients. My biggest challenge has been moving all my saved e-mail from my hard drive—based Entourage/Outlook client to my online Gmail account, and then tagging all that old e-mail so I can find it again. (I have a folder mind, not a tag mind, I'm afraid.)
Web searching and bookmarking. I already have a www.delicious.com account, so I just imported the bookmarks I had saved in my browser.
Word processing, presentations, and spreadsheets. After years of using Office, the move to Google Docs for my day-to-day productivity has been surprisingly easy. In fact, getting away from Office's "feature creep" has been refreshing. However, although Docs is fine for writing short pieces, it's not practical for writing a book. But how many of your students will be writing books? (Doug Johnson, 2009)
Question 2 is using the cloud safe and secure. This is probably the deal-breaker for many skeptics of this trend. As a devout belt-and-suspender kind of guy, I'd encourage you to keep local backup copies of all important online documents. But Jeffrey Kaplan, managing director of the consulting firm ThinkStrategies ("Five Myths About SaaS," CIO, March 23, 2009), assures, "Although service disruptions experienced by Google...get plenty of attention, those types of incidents don't happen very often, and they don't last as long as many enterprise outages. And there hasn't been a major compromise of a SaaS [software as a service] operation reported yet, even as we continue to read regular accounts of security breaches in traditional IT environments."
Are my files private? Can we trust Google and others not to peek at our stuff? This is another major concern. A slide in an online seminar offered through Google Apps Education Edition claims that:
• Google does not own your data.
• Google does not share your data.
• You can keep your data as long as you want.
• Google will remove your data when you ask.
You can take your data elsewhere. (Doug Johnson, 2009)
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