Does anybody know any good research topic ideas to do with cloud computing in educati

[DaveMargett91]

I'm in my final year at university and I'm trying to come up with a topic to base my dissertation on. I want to focus on cloud computing, but its use in school and education. But i cant think of a main point to focus.

Thanks.

 

[OS-Wiz]

Security is a big concern and is somewhat blocking wide-spread cloud adoption.

 

[root]

Cloud computing doesn't have a great application in "school".

(unless you're talking about schools reducing costs by buying services from a cloud provider, (e.g. Amazon))

Also. If I were you. I'd be rather careful about the use of the word cloud when referring to computing when writing your final year dissertation. cloud is a marketing work.

rather than "Cloud Computing in Education" your paper should be titled something like "Distributed Redundant Virtualised Computing in Education"


your main points to focus should be:


Costs -> V important to municipal schools
district purchases etc.

Security -> especially of outsourced providers.
Concerns of uploading student records.

Support
Centralised administration

Reliability
always on
accessibility access from anywhere etc?


If I'm honest, I don't think that you will get a good dissertation from cloud computing relating specifically to it's use in schools.

if you expand education to include higher education

then you might also include things like google apps that provide clouds to academics to do number crunching.

 

[jmacavali]

A lot of schools in the area use google apps and gmail.
A lot of schools also use the Microsoft live@edu.
Many schools also use dropbox or other related storage.

If you mean cloud computing - storing information in the cloud then schools are doing it.
If you mean cloud computing - using physical resources in the cloud to run computers located at a school, then it's not happening.


Honestly it's a vague concept and it will be hard to write a paper on it really....

 

[OS-Wiz]

A lot of schools in the area use google apps and gmail.
A lot of schools also use the Microsoft live@edu.
Many schools also use dropbox or other related storage.

If you mean cloud computing - storing information in the cloud then schools are doing it.
If you mean cloud computing - using physical resources in the cloud to run computers located at a school, then it's not happening.


Honestly it's a vague concept and it will be hard to write a paper on it really....

Actually its not as nubulous as you might think out there in the commercial world. And you're right, as with everything, its constantly evolving. Cloud storage/computing is based on the Service Oriented Architecture - Enterprise Service Bus (SOA - ESB). Many sources of info exist online explaining ESB. Check out: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...tYHQBA&usg=AFQjCNH3sYmFkNLUREgo1oVpXS2jQMPQGw

E.g.
SaaS - Software as a Service
PaaS - Platform as as Service
CaaS - Communication as a Service
etc. you get the idea. So, really Cloud computing has actually been fairly well defined already. If you will, a new name for the same thing.

Anyway, as I already stated, security is the main issue in a Business-to-Business (B2B) relationship in the Cloud. Many security providers are stepping into this space providing more and more secure solutions.