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Enlarge / Seth Erdman, center, and his fellow students use Chromebooks while working on a lesson in a third grade class on Friday, January 16, 2015, at Walden Elementary School in Deerfield, Illinois. (Anthony Souffle)

When you think about a traditional school workflow, it's not unlike that of a business: paper is generated and moved in a systematic way between the children and the teacher. Just as cloud computing has transformed workflows in business to make them more collaborative and mobile, that same type of change has been coming to schools. Children and teachers use the power of the cloud to collaborate while accessing, storing, and sharing content.

As with business, this change is ongoing, uneven, and by no means complete. But if schools are at least partly about preparing children for the next generation of work, then the cloud needs to be a part of that preparation. Just as some businesses have struggled to transition to the cloud, schools face similar challenges. But because schools involve a specific demographicchildren from a variety of abilities and socioeconomic and linguistic backgroundstheir challenges can be even more complicated.

Slowly but surely, in spite of the issues, cloud tools are coming to the classroom. As more companies, large and small, help schools bring about this transition in a way that makes sense for teachers and children in a classroom context, we are seeing a shift to the cloud and all the advantages (and problems) that brings.

Peter Jordan is the CEO and co-founder at Knowledge Matters, a cloud service that delivers business simulations to over one-third of high schools in the US, covering subjects like management, retail, and personal finance. He says the company has been in business long enough to remember when delivering this type of content to classrooms was far more complex.

"We think the cloud has already been transformational in delivering technology to the classroom," Jordan explained. "When we started Knowledge Matters, we were literally shipping CD-ROMs to schools across the country. From a technology standpoint, as an educational software company, it was a huge challenge, as we had to troubleshoot network configurations for teachers [and other installation issues]."

Jonathan Rochelle, director of product management for Google Education, says that operational efficiency is just part of the cloud's advantage. "Teachers no longer have to take home a box of papers," he said. "They can provide feedback much faster, and they are spending more time with the students instead of [grading] papers."

That shift in the teacher-student relationship goes even deeper, says Jason Klein, assistant superintendent for technology and learning at the Maine Township High School District in Chicago. He says using cloud tools has fundamentally changed the way teachers teach and children learn in his district's schools. Instead of a teacher being the information provider and the children being responsible for learning that information, the teacher becomes a facilitator or coach in helping children find the resources they need to learn. This arrangement makes children much more active participants in the learning process, he explained.

In fact, each of the 6,500 kids in Klein's district has a Chromebook computer and access to Google tools like Google Drive and Google Docs. Rochelle says teachers manage the flow of content between them and students using Google Classroom, which gives teachers a central administrative interface to manage cloud activity in the classroom. That includes building a roster, communicating assignments to the whole class or individual students, and facilitating communication across the classroom.

Klein says this capability enables teachers to review the documents children are working on in real time. Through the document-sharing capability, children can get feedback from peers as well as teachers.

One of the great advantages about working in the cloud is the interoperability between services. If teachers want to use a module from Khan Academy, a language lesson in Duolingo, or a YouTube video from CrashCourse, they can incorporate all of that into their course work. This allows them to customize lessons for each child or group of children, taking into account a range of abilities.

Yet trying to figure out which tools to use when accessing that world of content becomes a problem in itself. Klein's district provides a set of tools, but teachers are free to supplement those with whatever options they wish. In order to decide which tools are best from the universe of choices on the Internet, teachers communicate with one another, participate with other teachers on social networks to find what's working for them, and work with the school librarians, who are trained to find good sources and toolsand teach the teachers how to find them on their own.

Sonny Hashmi, who is managing director of global governments at online content management company Box, says his company focuses on forming relationships with as many tool providers as possible. Box builds in integrations whenever it can, whether that's with Blackboard, Khan Academy, G Suite, or Office 365. "We believe in a world where solutions have to work together seamlessly," Hashmi said.

While the cloud-computing trend favors the transition to more tools like these, obstacles remain. According to Rochelle of Google, "One of our biggest challenges is providing technology solutions that require bandwidth and some computer." This is especially true when kids go home after school. The Pew Center for Research has found that, while the Digital Divide is closing, it still persists for lower-income populations in the United States. And not every school can afford to issue digital tools to each student.

Esteban Sosnik is a partner at Reach Capital, who has invested in EdTech startups such as Nearpod, a content management and administrative tool aimed at classroom teachers, and Newsela, a reading platform that delivers leveled daily news content. He says one of the biggest challenges in bringing the cloud to the classroom is finding that central management tool that simplifies taking advantage of all the different options.

"There is a bottleneck in terms of making it easy to deploy," Sosnik said. "Teachers dont want to add more complexity into the classroom." He acknowledges Google Classroom is the closest to a central classroom administrative tool that we have. But he says that there is still no single default platform where teachers and children can start their daily digital journey (and there is a tremendous opportunity for a company to become that).

Klein points out that, just as in business, this type of change requires top-down support and innovative thinking on the part of the entire school system. But it also requires practical systems in place to manage these tools and equipment, set up refresh cycles, and simply maintain the computers the children are usingwhether that's a computer for every student or a cart system where classes share computers throughout the day.

None of these impediments is insurmountable, but it takes a clear vision on the part of school systems to give teachers and students the tools they need to learn in the 21st century. "The implementation is getting better, and the cloud and connectivity are helping. We expect in three to five years' time, it will be [even] easier for teachers to use this technology in the classroom," Sosnik said.

Ron Miller is a freelance technology journalist and blogger. He writes regularly on the cloud and the enterprise.

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Cloud computing pushes into the classroom, but not without challenges - Ars Technica

The president of 21Vianet Blue Cloud, Wing-Dar Ker, spoke at DataCloud Asia. The event was held in Singapore. This was the first time the organisers of the event held the conference in Asia.

Wing-Dar joined a panel of experts at the event to discuss the trends in Asia's cloud computing industry.

Wing leads a team responsible for managing 21Vianet Blue Cloud's partnership with Microsoft's cloud services in China.

Wing spoke of how cloud computing is a strategic priority for the Chinese government and of one particular case study done by the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of commerce.

This case suggested that by 2020 the industry could experience a compound annual growth rate of 40 to 45 percent, with a potential worth of $20 billion.

"Internet companies in China are investing billions into their own cloud businesses in coming years, seeking to take advantage of a market with 680 million Internet users," says Wing.

"Cloud computing is a strategic priority for the Chinese government, which has piloted cloud schemes in a few cities, will only drive the growth of data centers further."

"With the government viewing cloud with strategic importance alongside the hypergrowth of domestic internet companies, growth momentum in China's cloud sector is assured," says Wing.

"The market size of data centers 2015 was $7.6 billion and the average growth rate in the next few years is expected to be 35 percent or above and market demand for cloud computing and internet services combined with a willingness to invest will drive infrastructure build-up in the next few years."

Wing highlighted the value foreign players in the industry could bring to the Chinese market, especially the value of foreign companies that want local partnerships in order to navigate Chinese regulations and share market expertise.

Although domestic competition may be growing, foreign companies hold the key when it comes to technology.

Wing notes that there are risks, with one most notably being the regulatory landscape as the Chinese government continues to review the best ways to regulate the sector.

Also, foreign companies need to be aware of the nature of their product in markets other than their own, as success is not certain in China.Technological advances and brand recognition don't always translate to success in this highly competitive market.

"There are also perceived security and privacy concerns. Competition is fierce as technology continues to evolve and has not matured," Wing says.

"Entering China without an experienced local partner could be detrimental to operations, let alone market penetration."

Wing spoke of how cloud and internet data service providers are increasingly mingled together. Between the IaaS providers and internet data centers in the small-to-medium sized business sector, the latter are losing out.

"IDCs need to share with public cloud providers in the enterprise areas," Wing said. "IDC customers may not just be end users anymore, but should focus on cloud service providers because cloud service providers may not want the hassle of building, managing and operating data centers."

He also discussed 21Vianet Blue Cloud's value proposition in China, noting the company is the best partner to work with in the public and hybrid cloud areas.

"Most importantly, we have accumulated IP and knowledge by working closely with the government in areas critical to China cloud compliance and regulations," he says.

Last year, 21Vianet Blue Cloud unveiled its new "Cloud Landing in China" program. The program is designed to provide global cloud computing firms with one-stop solutions for entering the China market.

"We leverage our experience and formulate structured and systematic protocols to make market entry easier," says Wing. With the government's "One Belt, One Road", another development in the China market is the growth of cloud computing into Southeast Asia and Europe.

"We are going to follow our customers to wherever they go," he says.

"There will be a lot of opportunities for us to leverage the assets and presence of our global partners in these countries."

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21Vianet exec says cloud computing a priority for Chinese Govt - DataCenterNews Asia