Use Cloud Computing to Boost Learning

Cloud computing is essentially a practice through which data can be hosted, stored, managed and processed on a network of remote servers as opposed to on a local server or a personal laptop or computer. This practice allows applications to be operated by use of the Internet, allowing an individual to access any data he or she saves on that remote network of servers, or ‘the cloud,’ from anywhere as long as one has an internet connection.

Some common household names in regard to cloud services available to the general public include Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, Microsoft OneDrive, and Amazon’s Web Services. Each has various offerings with packages starting from a basic free service to a monthly paid service offering additional storage options. Some taut their accessibility with various products types, while others use highly encrypted security feathers to set themselves apart from the competition.

As more and more individuals and businesses are working remotely in today’s internet-enabled globalized economy, businesses and users have greatly benefited from the use of cloud computing to facilitate collaboration, productivity, and efficiency. With the advancement of tablets and smartphones, it will be even more beneficial. The Cloud has recently been leveraged to boost the overall learning process both from an individual’s perspective as well as that of companies looking to deliver learning and development tools over the cloud.

 Imagine that you are working in a group setting for a class project. There are different individuals that are keeping their own different notes. That no longer is the case. You can have a single document share over the cloud that all the members of your group can access and update simultaneously with their input. This level of collaboration over the cloud has allowed for huge gains in productivity, allowing for updates by users from anywhere in the world at anytime reducing the need for face-to-face meetings or other forms of set timelines to collaborate for updates.

Let’s take another specific example, one where the individual has to do research with large amounts of data. Historically students may only be able to conduct such forms of data analysis via college servers requiring a lot of computing power. However, of late they can utilize various cloud companies’ server space basically over then net run their computation analysis using the cloud’s server space and computing power to crunch that data and simply have the results of their experiment or thesis delivered to a professor by simply providing a web link as opposed to a thick stack of papers to review. 

What about a layman? Someone who is not in school collaborating on a book report or doing any extensive data mining research? One can be reading something and see something very useful worth make a note of. What would he or she use? A notepad? Maybe save it on one’s desktop? What if it’s the office desktop and that person wants to refer back to it when back home, or vice versa? What if it’s something he or she read on a smartphone but wanted to share it with someone else? An individual can easily clip that information and paste into a document saved on the cloud and give sharing rights to others to view it. There are specific cloud applications built to do just that.

As time goes on, the internet has become much cheaper and accessible for individuals with better speeds. Similarly, tools on which to use the internet have become a lot more ubiquitous, e.g. smartphones and tablets. This has ushered a new wave of accessing any type of information to boost learning at anytime from anywhere.