Education and the Cloud

Posted on | November 20, 2008 | 2 Comments

How will the shift to cloud computing affect education?

The variety of terms being thrown around at the moment – software as a service; platform as a service; cloudware; internet operating system; social operating system, etc – give us some indication of the complexity of the issues involved in clarifying what it all means and how eventually it might play out in the real world. But, however the concept develops, the key principle, that the Web becomes, in a very real sense, the computer, and that everything we currently get from the combination of network-plus-computer will be delivered in future by the network-as-computer.

Since 2002, I have been boring anyone willing to listen to me that this would be the case one day – and the core idea behind Glow in Scotland is based on this fundamental premise – that the world of knowledge is shifting inexorably onto the Web. Glow, of course, is not cloud computing – far from it! Some of my comments below will demonstrate just how far from the ideal notion of the Cloud Glow really is. But Glow is, at least, a meaningful nod in the direction of the path that education, just as much as any another knowledge-based sphere of human activity, is now taking, towards an (almost) entirely Web-based future.

So, what does the notion of the Cloud mean for education? And what requirements will be placed upon the Cloud to enable education to make the shift?

Any of the big players (you know who they are) that try to shape the Cloud, even a corner of it, as a private, bespoke, self-contained network with its own protocols and minimum interoperability with other such networks will, eventually, fail, their efforts overtaken by those who understand that the Cloud is essentially open and infinitely mashable. I like the phrase that Kevin Marks uses:

“… the net is composable, not monolithic. You can swap in and [out] implementations of different pieces, and combine different specs that solve one piece of the problem without having to be connected to everything else…”

They Net-Naysayers tend to see the Web as just that: monolithic. It is much easier to generate fear and loathing when we seem to be up against a colossal undifferentiated enemy (just ask George Bush about the nature of his ‘war against terror’). But the Web – and especially the Cloud – is much more likely to comprise an infinitely complex, infinitely layered, infinitely overlapping deluge of ‘composable’ (to use Kevin’s word) entities which can be brought together as required, and just as easily dropped or swapped in and out of a chosen array of tools, services and functions intended to meet an individual or collective need.

So, while we have the exciting reality at the present time of being able to construct our own Personal Learning Networks by pulling together whatever sources of knowledge, collaboration and debate that we find stimulating, the future will be one in which similar constructs will have to be composable at scale. This, I should add, for those who need the obvious stated, will not negate the power and efficacy of the PLN – indeed the potency of the PLN concept can only get stronger over time. But the possibility of pulling together regional or national ’systems’ that work for education on such scales will also be necessary for some time to come. Given the criticality of ‘enterprise-level’ learning networks, the Cloud will have to deliver complete stability, full virtualization, ‘roll-your-own’ authentication, support, open and flexible licensing, dynamic storage, extensive interoperability across operating systems and platfoms, infinite ‘mashability’, and, of course, universal, high-bandwidth, symmetrical broadband – and all instantly scalable to millions of users.

When one person or a small group of people (say, a class or even a school) can construct and maintain a virtual learning network or some kind using freely available web-based applications, that is merely Web 2.0 doing its stuff. When we have the capacity to derive something on the scale of Glow from the Web – a fully authenticated, highly flexible environment for collaboration and learning, scaled for thousands, tens of thousands, even millions of users – then we will have real cloud computing in education.

Perhaps that will be called Web 3.0…..

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, pln, the cloud, glow, web 2.0, web 3.0

Category: Web 2.0, education, glow, network learning, networks, open source, platform

Comments

2 Responses to “Education and the Cloud”

Jenny Luca
November 20th, 2008 @ 1:17 pm

I have been grappling with this idea for some time now and you have articulated what I have been trying to put together in my mind. I’ve been trying to picture the future of libraries. If knowledge is everywhere and accessible to everyone then what is the point of some central location. There isn’t one. What the point of libraries will be, I think, is as a meeting place for humanity to share ideas. A bit like Ancient Greece where the Sophists would meet up together to share ideas. What keeps coming to me with all of this change is that we still need human interaction and the formation of meaningful relationships to sustain us. I feel that I have found a friend in you John through this PLN, but meeting you probably cemented the friendship. I look at the school library I run and what is happening with the students at my school. Their reliance on print material has lessened greatly with their shift to the web. We may as well ditch non-fiction altogether. And yet our Library is thriving. Why? A welcoming environment. We have couches, cushions, kids can eat in there and use their phones and listen to ipods. We listen to them and we like them. We don’t force feed them books but they like the connectedness they feel there. The knowledge will be everywhere and easily accessible, but the need for human connection will be constant.
Bailie’s bus » Blog Archive » Community=Connectedness
June 13th, 2009 @ 10:24 am

[...] only on the weekend. I came upon Jenny Luca’s post on the future of libraries, referencing John Connell’s post which clearly I haven’t worked back to yet. As always an inciteful, thought-provoking [...]