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Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Ready or Not, the Cloud is Rolling in.

2:30 PM | Posted by Sue Parler | | Edit Post

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.
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Sue Parler
I'm currently in my 32nd year teaching at DePaul Catholic HS in Wayne, NJ. I teach Game Design, Cryptology, and Spanish -- yes, it's an odd mix -- even I admit it. I am the IT Coordinator at DePaul Catholic as well, which means I manage the network, the student information system, the website, and the 900+ computers in the building. Yep, keeps me busy.
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