District Administration - October 2011 - (Page 93)

Computing Power Do You Need? Students in the Hall County (Ga.) Public Schools, like the ones above, are moving away from desktops to Dell tablets as they move into the cloud. has foreseen the “anytime, anywhere” environment that cloud computing is now creating, but only in the past couple of years has it become an expectation, says Moore, a former chief information officer with Blue Valley Schools in Overland Park, Kan., where he spent 15 years. “Just as it has created that expectation in our personal lives, it’s the same thing in education,” he says. “That’s really fundamental, and it creates pressure on the way schools do things.” Despite the elimination of the Hewlett-Packard TouchPad this past summer, Elizabeth Crawford, HP’s marketing manager for K12 education, believes the education market has reached a “tipping point” where districts are beginning to move en masse toward the cloud. Some are setting up their own private clouds just for their school, some are moving applications and data onto Google-type services, and some are trying out various hybrid scenarios. “Each district is so different and unique in what they want and need,” she says. “I’ve seen schools with little computing power using hardware to get onto the network ... ‘thin’ clients that have very little computing power and no hard drive, all the way up to schools using a full-powered laptop because there are courses or programs or curriculum where students are doing things that are very multi-media intensive.” Within its own cloud, Google has seen heavier use particularly of Google Docs, a set of applications with which teachers can share assignments or lesson plans with stu- dents, other teachers or district administrators, although related apps like Google Talk and Google Sites also have drawn interest, says Jaime Casap, senior education manager. And tablets like Google’s own Chromebooks—as well as competing products such as Apple’s iPad—are being deployed to access and use cloud-based applications, Casap says. Benefits of the Cloud “Teachers are using cloud-based applications in everything to make their lives easier,” Casap says. “It’s changing the dynamic of the teacher-student relationship. The teacher used to hand out an assignment and say, ‘Go do it.’ Now teachers are doing more coaching than www.DistrictAdministration.com October 2011 93 http://www.DistrictAdministration.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - October 2011

District Administration - October 2011
Contents
From the Editor
Letters
News Update
Transportation Update
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Building a Blended Learning Program
How Are Science Fairs Fairing?
A New Age for Algebra
Early College High Schools
Changing of the Guard in Florida
CIO News
How Much Computing Power Do You Need?
An Unconventional Approach to 1:1
New Books
Problem/ Solution
Research Center
Product Focus
New Products
Professional Opinion
Going Mobile
Online Edge

District Administration - October 2011