What is a cloud?
"Geek-speakers" really struggle to keep the vocabulary fresh, the edge bleeding
(if you will). This time, the metaphor is a little short of perfect. In science,
a cloud is a visible mass of lighter-than-air water droplets. In technology, a
cloud is a collection of computer applications delivered over a network as
services. So a cloud is a network, and visible water droplets are software
applications. It's a stretch. Some of the wretched excesses of that fluffy dark
thing hanging over your afternoon golf game might be, metaphorically, more
accurate than we'd like. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Of course, 40 years ago, virtually all applications were delivered over networks, since the computers were room-sized. You connected using a dumb terminal (little more than a display and a keyboard -- see at left) to a mainframe computer somewhere else, to run a program. But sitting neatly between mainframe computing and cloud computing is the age of the microcomputer (still underway, in point of fact), which had, at its beginning, two relevant characteristics: 1) it was mostly about purchasing and managing objects (hardware, software, peripherals), and 2) networks were useful, but not necessary, to do work. (Remember sharing your Internet connection with your telephone? OK, probably not, but I do! The handset modem at right was how I connected to the university mainframe at my first teaching position.) These days, connecting things together has become the driving force in computing. We can blame the "mother of all networks," the Internet, for bringing us back around full circle. Since the geek-speakers have the memory of a gnat, it's all new, and it needs a new word. It's a cloud.
But, of course, that isn't to imply that nothing is actually new. Before the Internet, networks were small, for lots of reasons (some were good reasons, and we'll look at that in a bit). So, the new part of the "cloud" concept is that applications can be really made available globally, over the entire Internet, to anyone. From a business perspective, the result has the same impact as Napster had on the music industry, the e-book has on print -- it's no longer about delivering or selling objects, it's about delivering or selling capabilities. From a software perspective, that means we use Office 360 or Google Docs to word process, rather than purchasing a stand-alone copy of some software to run on our very own computer.
Why should I care?
Well, the Internet did happen for some very good reasons. When the tools of productivity move online, it makes information sharing, collaborating and group learning a lot easier, hence "cloud computing" is often associated with social networking and online learning management. From blogs to Facebook, people aren't just writing online, they're connecting, sharing, and constructing together. That's probably the most obvious advantage.
Another is very much in evidence in the age of smart phones. Since the computing work is actually done "on the cloud" (that is, somewhere else), the device used to access such a service can actually be quite cheap and simple. It takes a reasonably powerful computer to run Microsoft Office 2010. In contrast, you can word-process "on the cloud" from your smart phone.
Then there's software cost. As Google and others have shown, there really is no need to sell such services, so a lot of companies provide their services for "free," making a profit through selling ad space, or other marketing tools such as data harvested from the users of the service. The software isn't really free -- it's just being underwritten by thousands of advertisers. To further sweeten the pot, upgrades and bug fixes don't have dissemination issues. There's nothing to download since the software lives one place -- no one even notices the fix is in.
OK, well, so what's a "Private Cloud?"
A "private cloud" is essentially the same idea as a public cloud, except that the folks using the service are part of a closed collection of people. Unlike the private networks of 40 years ago, "closed" doesn't mean disconnected. The convergence of the Internet and the private network means that we can define "closed" or "private" virtually, through a central list of access credentials, without giving up the "anytime, any place" of public, Internet-based computing. Although a private cloud usually lives physically inside a district wide area network, it's still available to that same collection of people, no matter whether they're sitting in their home school, or half a world away.
Why a Private Cloud?
Private clouds exist for a variety of reasons, but privacy, as you might guess, is a big one. Private clouds are used by private companies or organizations with resource and business interests to protect, or organizations serving a unique population such as children.
An organization wanting to run a private cloud has to contract with (i.e. pay for) a service, or purchase hardware to run them within their own network. It usually needs paying someone to maintain the services, and support the people who use them. Some of those costs would exist anyway (after all, supporting teachers in the use of any tool, private or public, requires staff time), but running online software yourself does add something to the equation. To reduce costs, many private clouds run open source services or other free software. The private services my district uses include Moodle (online learning management), Mahara (social networking and ePortfolios), SharePoint (professional workflow), Wordpress (blogging and interactive writing), and Umbraco (public website support).
On the public cloud, we could have replaced Moodle with Edmodo, Mahara with Facebook, SharePoint with Google Docs, and Umbraco with any of a bunch of free or inexpensive web hosting services. Some of the reasons we've resisted would have been familiar with the old mainframe folks -- privacy, central management, support, consistency of service, and network security. But since we're in the business of supporting teachers and student learning, I'll use that perspective to flesh out some of these, and other, advantages.
It is amazing how many thorny questions teachers ask us about the public cloud which don't even need to get asked when the cloud is private, like...
"Geek-speakers" really struggle to keep the vocabulary fresh, the edge bleeding
(if you will). This time, the metaphor is a little short of perfect. In science,
a cloud is a visible mass of lighter-than-air water droplets. In technology, a
cloud is a collection of computer applications delivered over a network as
services. So a cloud is a network, and visible water droplets are software
applications. It's a stretch. Some of the wretched excesses of that fluffy dark
thing hanging over your afternoon golf game might be, metaphorically, more
accurate than we'd like. But I'm getting ahead of myself.Of course, 40 years ago, virtually all applications were delivered over networks, since the computers were room-sized. You connected using a dumb terminal (little more than a display and a keyboard -- see at left) to a mainframe computer somewhere else, to run a program. But sitting neatly between mainframe computing and cloud computing is the age of the microcomputer (still underway, in point of fact), which had, at its beginning, two relevant characteristics: 1) it was mostly about purchasing and managing objects (hardware, software, peripherals), and 2) networks were useful, but not necessary, to do work. (Remember sharing your Internet connection with your telephone? OK, probably not, but I do! The handset modem at right was how I connected to the university mainframe at my first teaching position.) These days, connecting things together has become the driving force in computing. We can blame the "mother of all networks," the Internet, for bringing us back around full circle. Since the geek-speakers have the memory of a gnat, it's all new, and it needs a new word. It's a cloud.
But, of course, that isn't to imply that nothing is actually new. Before the Internet, networks were small, for lots of reasons (some were good reasons, and we'll look at that in a bit). So, the new part of the "cloud" concept is that applications can be really made available globally, over the entire Internet, to anyone. From a business perspective, the result has the same impact as Napster had on the music industry, the e-book has on print -- it's no longer about delivering or selling objects, it's about delivering or selling capabilities. From a software perspective, that means we use Office 360 or Google Docs to word process, rather than purchasing a stand-alone copy of some software to run on our very own computer.
Why should I care?
Well, the Internet did happen for some very good reasons. When the tools of productivity move online, it makes information sharing, collaborating and group learning a lot easier, hence "cloud computing" is often associated with social networking and online learning management. From blogs to Facebook, people aren't just writing online, they're connecting, sharing, and constructing together. That's probably the most obvious advantage.
Another is very much in evidence in the age of smart phones. Since the computing work is actually done "on the cloud" (that is, somewhere else), the device used to access such a service can actually be quite cheap and simple. It takes a reasonably powerful computer to run Microsoft Office 2010. In contrast, you can word-process "on the cloud" from your smart phone.
Then there's software cost. As Google and others have shown, there really is no need to sell such services, so a lot of companies provide their services for "free," making a profit through selling ad space, or other marketing tools such as data harvested from the users of the service. The software isn't really free -- it's just being underwritten by thousands of advertisers. To further sweeten the pot, upgrades and bug fixes don't have dissemination issues. There's nothing to download since the software lives one place -- no one even notices the fix is in.
OK, well, so what's a "Private Cloud?"
A "private cloud" is essentially the same idea as a public cloud, except that the folks using the service are part of a closed collection of people. Unlike the private networks of 40 years ago, "closed" doesn't mean disconnected. The convergence of the Internet and the private network means that we can define "closed" or "private" virtually, through a central list of access credentials, without giving up the "anytime, any place" of public, Internet-based computing. Although a private cloud usually lives physically inside a district wide area network, it's still available to that same collection of people, no matter whether they're sitting in their home school, or half a world away.
Why a Private Cloud?
Private clouds exist for a variety of reasons, but privacy, as you might guess, is a big one. Private clouds are used by private companies or organizations with resource and business interests to protect, or organizations serving a unique population such as children.
An organization wanting to run a private cloud has to contract with (i.e. pay for) a service, or purchase hardware to run them within their own network. It usually needs paying someone to maintain the services, and support the people who use them. Some of those costs would exist anyway (after all, supporting teachers in the use of any tool, private or public, requires staff time), but running online software yourself does add something to the equation. To reduce costs, many private clouds run open source services or other free software. The private services my district uses include Moodle (online learning management), Mahara (social networking and ePortfolios), SharePoint (professional workflow), Wordpress (blogging and interactive writing), and Umbraco (public website support).
On the public cloud, we could have replaced Moodle with Edmodo, Mahara with Facebook, SharePoint with Google Docs, and Umbraco with any of a bunch of free or inexpensive web hosting services. Some of the reasons we've resisted would have been familiar with the old mainframe folks -- privacy, central management, support, consistency of service, and network security. But since we're in the business of supporting teachers and student learning, I'll use that perspective to flesh out some of these, and other, advantages.
It is amazing how many thorny questions teachers ask us about the public cloud which don't even need to get asked when the cloud is private, like...
- “Who is that…really?” In a private cloud, you know who everybody is, since the account was created and assigned to a specific person inside the organization. At any time, if you stop being confident that you know who an account represents, anyone with rights to your network can turn off the account. That greatly simplifies privacy and enforcement. Public cloud tools are based on a personal account model, making the question above (and the enforcement problems it implies) much more difficult.
- “Did you see THAT?” Inappropriate stuff online is always a problem, and a public cloud tool will always struggle with the problem of inappropriate content. In addition, most public cloud tools carry ads, and ads mean that your students are being targeted for commercial purposes. Often the things being sold aren’t appropriate for their age. A private cloud has none of these problems.
- “Can I use this for free for the life of my instructional needs? …this year? …this week?” Ning (social network tool), Jaycut (video editing), Glogster (collaboration tool), even the New York Times started out being free public cloud tools, and are now charging for their services. This is a tried-and-true business model, which works fine in the private sector where all of the players are private citizens. But for teachers serving public school students, waking up one morning and finding your tool has suddenly changed to a pay-for-services model means a change of instructional practice, often even lost activities and resources representing a time investment. On a private cloud, teachers don't have to worry about things suddenly disappearing or costing money.
- “Should I ‘friend’ my students?” Most teachers are strongly advised against “friending” students on Facebook, for good reasons. Some states have even attempted to outlaw it! In contrast, on the private cloud, where all the people are known, the answer is clearly yes — it’s like asking “Should I speak to my students?”
- “I can’t find…” Most teachers are not sophisticated computer users, hence a lot of technical support can be just helping someone retrieve an accidentally-deleted or overwritten file, or locating something that got lost or corrupted. On the public cloud (especially the free one), you’re pretty much on your own — if you accidentally delete something, or misplace it, there usually is no tech support safety net.
- “May I do this?” The public cloud must, by Federal law, restrict who can use it, and how. Because of that, most tools with social networking components require specific parent permissions for students under 13 (Edmodo sets that age at 18). Hence, a teacher of young students has to specifically acquire and manage parent permissions to use such tools, or run the risk of breaking the law (or, even worse, the wishes of a student’s very concerned parents, the reason the laws exist in the first place). In contrast, the private cloud is covered by a school’s Acceptable Use Policy contract.
- “CAN I do this?” There is really no substitute for asking this question of the people who install, implement, and support the cloud tools you use. You will find that, even without the power of the public cloud, the answer is usually “Yes!” In addition, with a private cloud, decisions about changes and upgrades are made with you, the teacher, in mind — no business model, no board of directors, no collection of advertisers, no shareholders, no IT staff with their own schedule and interests. In my district, many of the decisions about our cloud tools are actually made by interested teachers in regularly-scheduled focus group meetings.
This does not mean that the public cloud doesn’t have anything to
offer teachers and their student learning goals. With massive budgets and huge
IT staff, many big public cloud players have the ability to innovate and expand.
For some teachers, a private cloud will never be quite as snappy, attractive,
and extensive as the tools they find and use “out there.” But before they do, we
tell them to read the list of questions above, and make sure they understand
them all. But even more importantly, we ask then to ask themselves what they
want their students to do and learn. In almost all cases, the private cloud has
answers that work.
Metaphorically, a cloud is ill-defined, hard to contain and predict, and often all wet. Bringing your cloud "indoors" requires effort and some expense, but it makes it a lot easier for most teachers and students to use it comfortably.
Metaphorically, a cloud is ill-defined, hard to contain and predict, and often all wet. Bringing your cloud "indoors" requires effort and some expense, but it makes it a lot easier for most teachers and students to use it comfortably.
