Sue Parler's EDTC625 Blog

http://edocumentsciences.com

With all due respect to the Rolling Stones, Get Off of my Cloud could easily be an ad pitch for cloud-based security.  With our looming topic as Cloud Based Computing in an educational setting, several questions have arisen about security.  As with all things technology related, I felt it was important to find the most current information possible, rest assured, this information is current within the past two months.

First, let's make sure we're all singing from the same sheet - can you hear Mick Jagger in the background? If so, just hum along.  Let's be sure we envision "The Cloud" in the same general manner. Cloud computing is storing data and accessing application software via the Internet.  As online education is anytime, anywhere learning; cloud computing allows users anytime, anywhere access to their data and the applications to generate and manipulate that data.  As long as a user has access to the Internet, s/he has access to the cloud.

There are three different cloud hosting options:  private, public, and hybrid.  A private cloud provides hosted services to a limited number of specified people behind a firewall.  Generally, users are assigned log ins and passwords to access data.  In a public cloud setting, a vendor makes resources available to the general public free or on a pay-per-usage basis. As the name suggests, a hybrid model combines some in-house resources (private) with public resources.

Now let's tip-toe into the Alphabet Soup of cloud acronyms:

SaaS - Software as a service.  An information- and application-based cloud.  A business-level service over the public Internet.

PaaS - Platform as a service.  Development clouds. Software authoring - within the rules of the host - this is an economical way to develop without a hardware investment.

IaaS - Infrastructure as a service. Information technology made available via remote access.


And now a stroll through security...

The cloud service provider takes on the bulk of the responsibility for security, although the "client" is not free of responsibility.  The provider's job is simple:  within the provided infrastructure, isolate an environment for each client.  Each client should be able to access his data, not the data of any other client.  No one should be able to see the structure, systems, data or any attribute of any other client's environment.

Just because operating systems may run in the cloud does not free the the administrator of the client's network, or the client himself, from keeping up to date with the latest patches, and installing endpoint based antivirus, and firewalls.  Individual users should be reminded to keep confidential data, such as usernames and passwords, safe and secure.  Sensitive data should be encrypted, as always.

I've been doing a bit of research on Live@edu from Microsoft. Initially, it sounded like Microsoft's answer to Google. At DePaul Catholic High School, in Wayne, NJ, where I am the Technology Coordinator, we switched to Google hosted mail three years ago.  We still have our own domain, so our mail addresses are @dpchs.org, but we have all of the Google cloud-based tools at our disposal. These include the ability to share text documents, spreadsheets, forms, presentations; access to Blogger; and individual YouTube channels. It also allows us to share calendars; use Google phone; and a plethora of other cloud-based tools.

So when I initially read about Microsoft's Live@edu, which offers E-mail (for staff and students alike), shared calendars, and SkyDrive (cloud-based storage), quite frankly, I wasn't impressed. Been there, done that -- and more.

But the SkyDrive feature intrigued me - 25 GB of no-cost storage. That's a lot of flash drives.  

DePaul Catholic is a 1:1 Tablet PC school. Every teacher and every student has a Tablet PC.  This is our eighth year in the program. When a student's computer breaks down, as long as it's not hard drive failure, we take the hard drive out of the student's tablet and put it into a loaner until the original is repaired.  I've steered away from solid state drives merely because they are not swappable.  Enter the cloud.  

If each student has storage space with Live@edu, and we script a backup sequence that points to SkyDrive, we could seriously entertain solid state drives.   With the eminent advent of Windows 8, which I personally believe is a true education game-changer, I've been looking at the Lenovo Yoga and the recently released Microsoft Surface, both of which are solid state. 

So I rolled up my sleeves and purchased a domain (dpchs.info) from 1&1 for 99 cents.  I just created the two MX (mail) records and the CNAME record to register for Live@edu services.  It's a test bed right now, so stay tuned as I take my first formal journey to the cloud.

In the past, followers would gain information about the organization from their leaders. The information was filtered through this leadership as well. However now, with so much information readily available, followership need not rely on leadership for information. This has led to the end of blind followership. The dynamic has changed drastically.  

Ironically, in reading Will Richardson's blog the word "disruptive" surfaced again. This time Victor Hu, head of education technology and services for Goldman Sachs, said, "Technology is doing to education what it’s done to countless other industries: disrupting it. Where education once was static, bound to a textbook, now it’s moving to a global, interdisciplinary model."  

Richardson's response was interesting as he spoke about needing a disruptive influence in modern education and we - the educators - not big business and money should be driving the influence.