Techtalk: Cloud Computing and Developmental Education

Techtalk in Volume 33 has been addressing the digital divide in technology, first through the use of mobile phones and then through the development of digital literacies with digital storytelling. This third and final column in the series looks at bridging both the hardware/software divide and the digital literacies divide through the educational use of cloud computing.The Advent of Cloud ComputingThe history of personal computing could be summed up as a race to provide larger and larger amounts of data storage that can be manipulated at faster and faster speeds in smaller and smaller devices. Over the years, data has moved from floppy disks to hard drives to USB thumb drives and most recently to solid-state RAM drives. Likewise, computers downsized from the desktop to the laptop and even smaller with netbooks like the HP Mini and tablet computers like the new Apple iPad. This idea has had a strong impact in changing the way users work, play, and socialize.Concurrently, the network that used to link only college campuses, businesses, and government agencies began to spread as well, and it eventually made its way to individual computers. Personal computers began to connect to this larger network, the Internet, through wired connections like phone modems and cable modems and then through wireless connections, which facilitated the move to smaller, more mobile computers. Over the past decade and a half, these personal machines, with their local data storage and processing power, have merged with the Internet, and a infrastructure was created where it is often difficult to discern where the individual ends and the network begins.Both of these ideas, shrinking computing devices and increasing network access, have converged in recent years to bring us handheld mobile devices like iPhones, smartphones, and tablet computers that connect to the Internet over always-on cellular connections. Now the network really is everywhere, or at least everywhere there is a cell-phone signal.Cloud computing is the natural extension of this always-on connection, and it posits a view of computing in which all data and all the applications to create and manipulate that data exist in the cloud; that is, on the Internet in various online services. If you are putting your photos on Flickr (www.flickr.com), writing documents using Google Docs (docs. google.com), posting your thoughts to a blog, collaborating with coworkers in a wiki, socializing with Facebook (www.facebook.com), or tweeting from your phone using Twitter (www.twitter.com), you are already using the cloud (although true cloud computing would see all computing, not just some, occurring in this manner).To access the cloud, all that is needed is an Internet connection and a way to view the Internet, most likely a web browser or other app that connects to the Internet. With cloud computing, it no longer matters what local hardware (laptop, desktop, smartphone, netbook) or what operating system (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux) is being used. It is a view of computing that supersedes any past battle in the personal computing world, whether that battle was Windows versus Macs, Netscape versus Microsoft, or proprietary software versus open-source software. With cloud computing, none of these divisions matter; data and applications are available everywhere. As John Gage at Sun Microsystems said years ago, network is the computer (PCWorld, 2009). The choice of how to access that network is up to the individual.Implications of Cloud ComputingSo, what does this mean for developmental students and educators? The first, and perhaps most important, element when addressing issues inherent to the digital divide is lowered costs, both for software and hardware. Why pay for Microsoft Office when you can use the free, web-based office suites offered by Google or Zoho (www.zoho.com) or even Microsoft itself (which will begin offering a browser-based version of their Office applications with the release of Office 2010)? …