This week, Glide Education and Wilson County Schools in North Carolina announced a launch of the Glide Education Cloud Computing Pilot Program. Glide Education is a comprehensive cross-platform cloud computing solution for schools providing students, teachers, school administrators and parents with a full suite of online and offline rights based productivity, collaboration, advanced web search and social networking applications.
The Glide platform is designed to support mobile classroom and distance learning, teacher training, parent participation and school administration.
The Wilson County School System has fourteen elementary schools, six middle schools, three traditional high schools, one early college high school, one alternative learning center, and one professional learning center. The Wilson County School System serves approximately 12,500
students in kindergarten through adult education. Wilson County Schools has a "cloudy vision".
See more here:
http://www.streetinsider.com/
Is your vision cloudy? This week on our main website www.ncvps.org and on our GO LIVE "Open" Book study site we posted our first interview with Curt Bonk, author of the World is Open
-http://sites.google.com/site/
So, what do we mean by cloud computing? Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand, like a public utility.
Huh?
Why would I want my vision to be cloudy?
(Revised from: http://preilly.wordpress.com/
Cloud Computing and Desktop Virtualization have important educational and financial benefits. For the purposes of this blog I am going to keep this very simple:
Whether educational tools and resources are located in the ‘Public Cloud’ or the ‘Private Virtualized Cloud’, they are accessible from anywhere, at anytime, via a web browser. This unlocks the resources of the school and makes them available 24×7x7. By doing so, we extend learning opportunities and get more return on our software investment.
Schools utilizing this new paradigm are able to increase the number of computers available to students without increasing their budget because they can purchase less expensive devices or re-image existing computers. Because ‘Public Cloud’ and ‘Private Virtualized Cloud’ applications run on servers, the student device can be anything that can run a web browser, including a $500 ipad, $300 Netbook, a $200 iTouch, or any Smartphone.
School IT support teams can be more productive because they are no longer maintaining dozens of educational applications on thousands of individual computer hard drives. The applications now reside on servers in the ‘Public Cloud’ or the ‘Private Cloud’. Since the software is on servers, software does not have to be ‘pushed out’ or ‘ghosted’ to every hard drive. The end-user’s computer accesses the servers and the new software and can use it immediately.
What first steps should I take as a school leader?
Determine what applications and data you are comfortable having hosted in the Public Cloud, what applications will need to be hosted in your own Private Virtualized Cloud, and what applications will need to remain hosted on local hard drives. Remember that video and audio editing, computer programming, and some high-end CAD applications may not be
suited for the Public or Private Virtualized Cloud.
Planning this hybrid environment
Make a commitment to subscribing to applications delivered from the Cloud. Begin researching alternatives to the software applications and resources that are currently loaded on your desktop hard drives. Whenever there are Web-based applications that are comparable to the hard-drive based applications, give precedence to the Web-based product even if it is not as feature rich and robust.
How do I implement?
Begin planning the Private Virtualized Cloud by determining what desktop virtualization strategy you want to deploy.
The least expensive option called Client Virtualization allows for approximately (50) simultaneous users to share the server OS and whatever applications are being hosted.
Another option is called Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). In this approach the entire end-user machine (Desktop OS, Applications, and Storage) is virtualized on the server. Obviously, fewer VDI desktops (approximately 20-25) can be hosted and run simultaneously on each server. This requires the purchase of more servers and OS licenses than in the Client Virtualization approach.
Although these are the main approaches to virtualization there are other strategies. In reality, most schools will likely employ both Client Virtualization and VDI strategies in their Private Cloud. The planning process will help determine which users use which strategy.
One final piece of advice as you begin this journey, find some independent technical experience and advice via NCVPS as we can connect you with those companies who are developing virtualization strategies for the cloud. As the Race to the Top and Innovation 3 Grants picture
become less cloudy, perhaps your school district's vision will become more "cloudy" as you think of ways to bring multiple services like www.ncvps.org, www.
peer districts to share in cost, and/or reach out to us today, and we'll connect you with the right folks to help make your vision cloudy.
Have a great week with the virtual advantage of www.ncvps.org!
Bryan
I applaud the cloud advocacy - we should chat about some of the advice though. I might suggest that the final piece of advice should be the first (only?) advice - specifically, find some technical experience and advice (from a non-vendor/provider).
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