my topic name is cloud computing, for this assignment you need to use 6 scholarly articles out of 10, and remaining 4 should be popular or professional articles. below i attached 6 scholarly articles on my topic, you need to search remaining 4 articles those should be popular or professional articles.
cc1.pdf
cc2.pdf
cc3.pdf
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The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
EL
29,2
Cloud computing
A potential paradigm for practising the
scholarship of teaching and learning
214
Received 14 December 2010
Accepted 19 December 2010
P.Y. Thomas
Educational Technology Unit, Centre for Academic Development,
University of Botswana, Gabarone, Botswana
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to explore the educational potential of “cloud computing” (CC), and how it
could be exploited in enhancing engagement among educational researchers and educators to better
understand and improve their practice, in increasing the quality of their students’ learning outcomes,
and, thus, in advancing the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) in a higher education context.
Design/methodology/approach – Adoption of the ideals of SoTL is considered an important
approach for salvaging the higher education landscape around the world that is currently in a state of flux
and evolution as a result of rapid advances in information and communications technology, and the
subsequent changing needs of the digital natives. The study is based on ideas conceptualised from
reading several editorials and articles on server virtualisation technology and cloud computing in several
journals, with the eSchool News as the most important one. The paper identifies two cloud computing
tools, their salient features and describes how cloud computing can be used to achieve the ideals of SoTL.
Findings – The study reports that the cloud as a ubiquitous computing tool and a powerful platform
can enable educators to practise the ideals of SoTL. Two of the most useful free “cloud computing”
applications are the Google Apps for Education which is a free online suite of tools that includes Gmail
for e-mail and Google Docs for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and Microsoft’s cloud
service (Live@edu) including the SkyDrive. Using the cloud approach, everybody can work on the
same document at the same time to make corrections as well as improve it dynamically in a
collaborative manner.
Practical implications – Cloud computing has a significant place in higher education in that the
appropriate use of cloud computing tools can enhance engagement among students, educators, and
researchers in a cost effective manner. There are security concerns but they do not overshadow the
benefits.
Originality/value – The paper provides insights into the possibility of using cloud computing
delivery for originating a new instructional paradigm that makes a shift possible from the traditional
practice of teaching as a private affair to a peer-reviewed transparent process, and makes it known
how student learning can be improved generally, not only in one’s own classroom but also beyond it.
Keywords Botswana, Teaching, Educational development, Digital storage, Search engines,
Virtual learning environments
Paper type General review
The road to success is always under construction (Author unknown).
The Electronic Library
Vol. 29 No. 2, 2011
pp. 214-224
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/02640471111125177
Introduction
Many advances in learning technologies are taking place throughout the world; these
advances offer a range of tools and new opportunities to enhance teaching and learning
by enabling individuals to personalise their environments in which they work or learn.
There is growing acceptance of virtualisation and cloud computing today across the
world to meet the rapidly changing economic needs and improve service delivery.
Proponents suggest that the cloud delivery model will help cut down on IT
management cost, while providing greater flexibility in maintaining security,
reliability and compliance.
This fairly short theoretical paper explores the nature and educational potential of
“cloud computing” (CC), and how its affordances could be exploited in advancing the
scholarship of teaching and learning[1] (SoTL) in a higher education context. In the
paper it is argued that the CC has a significant place in the higher education landscape
both as a ubiquitous computing tool and a powerful platform that can enhance
engagement among educational researchers and educators to understand and improve
practice, and thus, increase the quality of their students’ learning outcomes.
Two of the most useful free “cloud computing” applications are the Google Apps for
Education which is a free online suite of tools that includes Gmail for e-mail and Google
Docs for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and Microsoft’s cloud service
(Live@edu) including the SkyDrive (http://skydrive.live.com). By critically examining
the utility of these two tools, it is found that they are user-friendly media, which can be
used as a personal digital workspace as well as for storage for digital artefacts
including real time research data. This workspace can as well be used as an
environment for scholarly communications, collaboration, discovery and publication/
dissemination of scholarly work. Artefacts stored in the “cloud” can be accessed from
anywhere at anytime, and can be easily shared with others. Using the cloud approach,
everybody can work on the same document at the same time to make corrections as
well as improve it dynamically in a collaborative manner. Besides, it is particularly
useful to academics for sharing tested-and-tried teaching materials, strategies, teacher
portfolios, and research outcomes (on how they have made learning possible with focus
on issues around “What’s possible?” “What worked?”, “What did not work?”, “What
are the conditions under which learning occurs?”, etc), and all these, with an eye not
only to improving their own classroom but to advancing practice beyond it. As a result,
the purpose of this paper is to raise awareness among educators on the potential of CC
in providing a platform for active collaboration, storage and dissemination of
intellectual work in the form of digital scholarship to other members of the professional
community, and thus, to encourage them to adopt CC in their research and also to
integrate technology into the classroom.
Issues and challenges in higher education
The higher education (HE) landscape around the world is in a constant state of flux and
evolution, mainly as a result of significant challenges arising from efforts in adopting
emerging technologies and pedagogies in their teaching and learning environments.
This is mainly because of a new genre of students with learning needs vastly different
from their predecessors, and it is increasingly being recognized that using new
technology effectively in higher education is essential to providing high quality
education and preparing students for the challenges of the twenty-first century.
However, an unresolved challenge to the effective use of technology in education is the
continued dominance of traditional didactic pedagogy despite the critical need for a
paradigm shift from the passive teacher-centred instructivist strategies (transmission
of information and skills from teacher to the students) to student-centred constructivist
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approaches whereby students construct knowledge through active engagement with
their peers as well as the teacher in rich learning environments. Although
constructivist orientation is the most talked about and preferred approach to
teaching and learning, few teachers actually practice it. Even with the traditional
approaches, there are few excellent teachers at this level.
Further, although the new technologies have the potential to play an important role
in the development and emergence of new pedagogies, where control can shift from the
teacher to an increasingly more autonomous learner, most of those who make use of
educational technology simply convert classroom-based content to electronic format
while still retaining its traditional distinctive knowledge-centric nature that view
knowledge and reality as existing external to the learner; the change is very slow or not
forthcoming at all for various reasons. This is mainly because teachers lack certain
essential skills for technology-supported constructivist approaches; further, some
teachers have limited opportunities to research new pedagogies, to collaborate with
peers and to appraise the strategies of those performing better in their teaching
practice; as a result, learners get limited support to develop critical skills from their
teachers who often themselves lack these skills. This scenario is not only in developing
countries, but also widespread in developed countries. Based on a UK-based study,
Twigg (2003) reports, “Unfortunately, the likelihood that their adoption of new
technologies would foster innovative pedagogy is slim”. After analysing the state of
technology use in higher education at Stanford University in USA, Cuban (2001)
concluded, “Dominant teaching practices remained largely constant in the years of
greatest penetration of new technologies”. As a result, teaching remains more a private
interaction between the teacher and his/her own students, and is seldom evaluated by
peers or any reviewers for effectiveness.
It is becoming clear to many people, including students, that traditional methods are
untenable to address all the needs of higher education where the emphasis is on higher
order learning experiences and outcomes demanded of a changing knowledge- and
communication-based society. The rapid advances in technology in the last few
decades have had a significant impact on work, leisure, culture and social interaction.
The kinds of skills students need to develop to be prepared for the jobs of the
twenty-first century are different from what their predecessors needed 21 years ago.
Therefore, it is not an option but is a necessity for teachers to move beyond their
comfort zones towards adopting constructivist approaches that can better equip their
students adequately. It is believed that this move can be effectively facilitated by
adopting the ideals of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) through
innovative research approaches that befit the digital age in ways it is conducted,
conveyed, and shared among colleagues and the public, and how it is integrated into
one’s own teaching to achieve a new level of efficiency and effectiveness.
Scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL)
It is becoming increasing evident that teaching should no more be a private affair (as it
used to be traditionally) but a peer-reviewed transparent process that makes it known
what makes learning possible and how student learning can be improved generally. An
ideal model of the SoTL offers a framework for peer review and for making transparent
the processes of making learning possible, not only in one’s own classroom but even
beyond it. Lee Shulman and Pat Hutchings (1999) contend that the scholarship of
teaching “requires a kind of ‘going meta,’ in which faculty frame and systemically
investigate questions related to student learning – the conditions under which it
occurs, what it looks like, how to deepen it, and so forth – and do so with an eye not
only to improving their own classroom but to advancing practice beyond it.” The
salient attributes of SoTL are:
.
Teaching as well as its development is done publicly to invite critical review in
order to improve teaching but also with an emphasis on inquiry into student
learning.
.
Peer review, and evaluation of teaching and its development; peer review
enhances the dialogue related to teaching effectiveness, course content,
pedagogical methods, and assessment strategies.
.
Adoption by peers through further development, modification or even as it is in
an atmosphere of intellectual openness which is a recognition of the
appropriateness of one’s approaches.
.
Investigation of questions related to student learning, particularly around issues
of student learning – the conditions under which it occurs, what it looks like,
how to deepen it, and so forth – with a view to improving not only their own
classroom but also to advancing practice beyond it.
It is argued in the present paper that substantial pedagogical innovations in higher
education will not come unless there is a proper understanding of the processes of
SoTL, a positive mindset towards a culture of the SoTL, a sense of intellectual
openness, and the adoption of its ideals by teachers in higher education. The
understanding that should precede adoption should be deep enough to bring about a
change in teachers’ beliefs about what constitutes knowledge and learning in higher
education settings, and further, what means to be “educated” in the twenty-first
century. This is an essential catalyst for educational change to occur. Fosnot (1996)
reports:
If there is a key to reinventing our educational system, it lies in what our teachers believe
about the nature of knowing. Without a re-examination and change in beliefs about the nature
of knowing, there will be no substantial change in the enterprise of education; we will stay in
a vicious cycle (Fosnot, 1996, p. 202).
The new epistemological beliefs – constructivism and SoTL – must then be
incorporated into the teaching practice. By constructivist belief, the emphasis is on
learner-centred teaching and learning environments that is supported by the
affordances of emerging communication technologies. By the principles of SoTL, the
success in aligning our classroom practice depends largely on our individual efforts,
and our ongoing dialogue with colleagues who may have done it successfully before or
who are struggling with the same transformation. Collaborative dialogue and
communication within a community connect minds, either directly or indirectly,
engenders deep thinking and fosters cross fertilisation of ideas. Hutchings (Carnegie
Foundation, 2000) presented the following taxonomy of questions teachers can pose in
such collaborative environments for inquiry into student learning.
.
“What works?” – These are questions that seek “evidence about the relative
effectiveness of different approaches”.
.
“What is?” – These are questions that seek to describe how students learn, and
accordingly, describe different teaching strategies.
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“Visions of the possible” – These are questions related to goals for teaching and
learning that have yet to be achieved or are new to the teacher asking the
questions.
“Theory building” questions – These are questions designed to build theoretical
frameworks for SoTL.
By and large, the overall SoTL approach is similar to “development research” as
articulated by Van Den Akker (1999). Development research design is appropriate
when the intervention is implemented to address a need. Van Den Akker (1999)
clarifies a few steps of development research design:
In the search for innovative “solutions” for educational problems, interaction with
practitioners . . . is essential . . . Interaction with practitioners is needed to gradually clarify
both the problem at stake and the characteristics of its potential solution. An iterative process
of “successive approximation” or “evolutionary prototyping” of the “ideal” intervention is
desirable. Direct application of theory is not sufficient to solve those complicated problems
(Van Den Akker, 1999, pp. 8-9)
For most teachers, SoTL is an uncharted territory; technology can greatly facilitate and
advance the SoTL. More than ever before, there is an urgent need for more and better
research through increased active collaboration among teachers in order to optimise
their roles and expertises. Active collaboration among teachers is no longer an option,
but a must for their success as teachers; further, it has a growing positive impact on the
intellectual life of their institutions. It is even crucial for the survival of higher
education institutions when they are ranked based on the extent of its online presence
as a provider of quality education.
What is cloud computing?
“Cloud computing” (CC) is a term for networked computers that deliver IT services
over the internet to many users in an on-demand environment. The type of services
range from adaptations of familiar tools to address customers’ various needs, ranging
from scientific research to e-commerce. Commercial and individual cloud computing
services are already available from Amazon, Yahoo, Salesforce, Desktop Two,
Zimdesk, and Sun Secure Global Desktop, while Google’s efforts in cloud computing
have attracted a great deal of interest (Delaney and Vara, 2007; Naone, 2007).
Institutions can pay some Cloud Service Providers a usage fee and get the functionality
of a system [without having] to own it; there is no need to buy hardware and software
licenses and pay for maintenance. Thus, the cloud model offers a much cheaper way to
acquire and use IT services; this is quite beneficial especially for educational
institutions in these days of appalling economic crunch. Users pay only for what they
use, as they do with electricity or water. This paradigm has also been referred to as
“utility computing,” in which computing capacity is treated like any other metered
utility service – one pays only for what one uses. Users can reach into the cloud for
resources as they need from anywhere at anytime. For this reason, cloud computing
has also been described as “on-demand computing.”
Discussed below are certain salient features of CC that are relevant to academics.
However, it has to be noted that any detailed technical aspects of CC are certainly out of
the scope of this paper. The concept of CC is not new, as cloud computing evolved out
of earlier technologies for distributed processing, such as “grid computing.” Typically,
the cloud computing infrastructure resides in a large data centre and is managed by a
third party, who provides computing resources as if it were a utility (such as electricity
or water) – accessible by anyone, anywhere over a network. The cloud is a metaphor
for the internet; some people call it the World Wide Computer. Actually, it is designed
to work like a whole computer in the cloud and aimed at a wider audience, including
those who cannot afford their own computer. The cloud computing model serves its
clients with whatever they request for, whether it is the internet, software applications,
his or her personal files. It also allows users to access supercomputer-level power.
Clouds utilise a set of typically virtualised computers that provide users with the
ability to start and stop servers or use services only when needed. Physically, the
resource may sit on a bunch of servers at different data centres or even span across
continents. It is able to dynamically provide, configure, and reconfigure servers to
address a wide range of needs. There are three major types of CC computing services.
They are:
(1) Software-as-a-service: this type of cloud provides a wide range of applications
(software) tools to end users. Any web application is a cloud application in the
sense that it resides in the cloud. Google Docs (for word processing and
spreadsheets), YouTube, SlideShare, Amazon, Facebook, twitter, flickr, and
virtually every other Web 2.0 application is a cloud application in this sense.
(2) Platform-as-a-service: web hosting, data hosting services and computer
services; For example, Amazon’s S3 and EC2 offerings.
(3) Infrastructure-as-a-service: also called utility computing, this type of cloud
provides virtual hardware capacity to organizations on an elastic basis.
Amazon was the pioneer in this providing virtual machine instances, storage,
and computation as innovative services in this category. Data Storage/hosting
and archiving/preservation are important services among these.
By its design, cloud computing is scalab …
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