Abstract: The development of our coeval society, information and technology of our knowledge society depends on technology development that has long been based on the increasing performance of different devices concurrently. The purpose of modern computing technology solutions miniaturized is the integration of its entire computing power in a single device and it must be an external source, which allowed the emergence of cloud computing. Abstract introduces the objective and intended contribution of the research. The technology involves a number of benefits to its users, evidenced by its adoption by firms that have succeeded to reduce their equipment costs and maintenance. The outsourcing all facilities that a computer can offer complement the idea of reducing costs and not accidentally is useful in education. The cloud solutions allow the teaching, research and development to be more efficient and sustainable which makes as the educational organizations to consider adopting these solutions.
Key words: Cloud computing, cloud based e-learning, platform, Infrastructure, security, trackability, collaboration.
I. Introduction: With the rapid advancement of technology and the development of emerging technologies such as cloud computing, the issues of reach and quality are addressed by enabling low cost implementation of IT tools. Remote classrooms enabled by cloud will help in running multiple classrooms through a small group of teachers and will help overcome the problem of lack of skilled teachers. In addition, it will also lead to standardisation of course content and education delivery methods. The India Vision 2020 document, by the Planning Commission of India, lays a huge emphasis on higher education. Cloud can play a massive role in delivering higher education by being an innovative platform for classroom lectures, using streaming on the web. Provided that cloud-enabled technologies can overcome student data privacy-related concerns and if the network bandwidth becomes available at every doorstep, cloud can lay down a solid foundation for a transformational journey of the education system in India. The cloud computing technology can be adopted in all areas of society and in education. The e-learning solutions based on the cloud promote a new era of learning, in which the lectures and labs are based on cloud platform through virtualization. A variety of knowledge can be made available to teachers and students through cloud-based services and these services can be accessed anytime, anywhere and on any device. On the other hand, providing educational services through cloud computing technology enables them to acquire the skills needed in the global information society. Many universities have begun to accede to this initiative and there is evidence of a significant decrease in costs as a result of implementing cloud solutions. Cloud computing Regarding to define cloud services there have been confusions, even among teachers, who have supposed that cloud computing refers to all services provided by the Internet that are not hosted by their institution. For education, the approach of cloud computing technology is based on the services they offer, their implementation and architecture. Thus, from the point of view of the services, can be mentioned:
‘ Platform as a service (PaaS) that provides a range of software for the development of programs;
‘ Software as a service (SaaS), so users access cloud software provided by cloud administrators who supervise them;
‘ Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) that is the base model in Cloud Computing.
After the method of implementation, the cloud can be public, private or hybrid. Microsoft Company already works in the area of Cloud Computing using Windows Azure, which is made available to users as PaaS and IaaS This service is implemented as a Public Cloud. From the point of view of learning technologies, web based learning offers several advantages over the conventional classroom learning. The biggest advantage is related to the low cost and use learning content anytime and anywhere. Learning material is easily maintained and updated; it may include multimedia content to facilitate understanding of concepts. Student-centered approach and the teacher creativity in making the learning material are encouraged. Uses of cloud in education Some schools use low-level cloud services for data storage but the use of cloud computing in education.
There was a time when, to use files like Word Excel files, etc. on different computers, we needed to save our files on a external storage drive like CD-ROM disk. The drive or disk then travelled around with us so that we could load our information onto other computers while holding our breath until the document was actually retrieved, not any longer. The safety, stability, and ease-of-use of cloud computing in education is resulting in widespread adoption in educational institutions of all sizes and types.
II. CLOUD AND ITS TYPES
Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered as a service over a network (typically the Internet). The name comes from the use of a cloud-shaped symbol as an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it contains in system diagrams.
Cloud computing has four types based on the deployment. These are :
‘ private cloud which deals with the delivery of cloud services to a restricted set of consumers, usually within a single organization.
‘ Public cloud that is concerned with the delivery cloud services to a relatively unrestricted set of consumers.
‘ Community cloud which handles cloud infrastructure shared by several organizations and supporting a specific community that has shared concerns.
‘ Hybrid cloud that is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability.
Following figure shows the Cloud Architecture:
III. Why we Store in the Cloud?
Are there really any true advantages in education for storing information off-site on a server that could be located anywhere? But my answer is yes. A recent conversation about cloud computing with several IT professionals of the educational field, there has some significant advantages:
1. No more carrying around devices, such as thumb drives or CDs. You don’t need to worry about losing the device, breaking the CD, or not having your information load properly.
2. Easy access: notes, lesson plans, labs, grades’ just about anything digital that you use in teaching is easily uploaded and accessed anytime.
3. Stability: cloud computing is now to the point of being a very stable technology that you can rely on.
4. Security: Your data, content, information, images ‘ anything you store in the cloud usually requires authentication for example, ID and password, so it is not easily accessible by anyone. In addition, should something happen to the technology at school, your content will still be available to you and your students if it is stored elsewhere.
5. Shareability: Working on an instructional assignment with other teachers? You can share some or all of your files that you have stored in the cloud. No more obtaining an extra thumb drive or burning another CD or DVD. You just need to send a link to the file(s) destination.
6. Trackability: Make changes to a lesson and want to change it back? No problem. Cloud computing will save multiple revisions and versions of a document so that you can chronologically trace back the evolution of an item.
7. Collaboration: You can set-up various student groups to work on projects and assignments in the cloud.
8. Good-bye copier! That’s right! With cloud computing, the amount of photocopying is reduced significantly ‘ even more so if each student has their own smart device (computer, laptop, tablet, etc.). Quizzes, tests, assignments all can be taken, scored, shared with student and parents, and stored.
9. Good-bye file cabinets! With cloud computing redundancy, there is no longer the need to both save files digitally as well as in paper format. Cloud computing systems are regularly backed-up, so the chances of losing content are quite small. And, no more file cabinets means more classroom space for you and your students!
Following figure shows the Cloud Architecture for Education.
Following Figure shows the Cloud Service Model used in education system. Following figure shows the Cloud Deployment Model.
IV. Challenges
‘ The course curriculum in most institutes is not updated regularly in line with global developments. Reach of quality education in remote villages has traditionally been low. Lack of internet presence in such areas has been a bottleneck.
‘ Inflating cost of education has led to layoffs of teaching staff and increasing class size thus increasing the student to teacher ratio to unimaginable levels. Additionally, , there is dearth of qualified teachers in the country.
‘ Teachers and educational institutions have not been technology savvy traditionally; hence the adoption of new technologies has been slow.
V. Benefits of cloud adoption
‘ Standardisation of content: Courses delivered over cloud through a central location will lead to a standard content delivery to multiple remote virtual classrooms.
‘ Collaboration: Students and teachers can collaborate on studies, projects using collaboration solutions.
‘ Agility to rollout new courses: Cloud-enabled technologies ensure rapid access to infrastructure services thereby rendering agility in rolling out newer products.
‘ Improved administrative efficiency of schools and universities: Teachers and the administrative staff can focus on the core functions of the institution instead of futile efforts on IT infrastructure and the applications set-up.
‘ Higher quality of education delivered anytime, anywhere: Courses with updated content can be delivered consistently across all locations.
‘ Lower cost of education: Leveraging on limited staff or teachers, a university can reach out to numerous students all across the globe, hence limiting the costs of education delivery.
‘ Scalability: Scalable systems on cloud to provision big data platform for research and analysis.
VI. Areas where cloud computing can have an impact
Classroom technologies
Interactive engagement ‘ Centralised faculty assisted by local teachers
‘ Students interaction with teachers, delivering lectures, presentations or response to polls and questions
Collaboration ‘ Students and teachers collaborating on projects by creating and sharing content
‘ Communication by messaging or video
Mobility ‘ Extend classrooms and labs with mobile devices such as smart phones,
‘ Tablets virtual desktop technologies facilitate remote access
Real-time assessment ‘ Adapting lessons based on observations of student interactions, notes taken
‘ Content can be highlighted, annotated or updated via electronic media
Administrative technologies
CRM ‘ Student life-cycle management enables better management of recruitment and admissions, student financial aid and billing, student records and performance, transfers and alumni relationship
ERP ‘ Educational institutions manage internal and external resources including physical assets, financial and human resources
Business intelligence ‘ Teachers and students use analytics in classrooms; evaluating and establishing curriculum
Smart campus ‘ The CIO is responsible for public safety, transportation, energy and water management, building maintenance, student services
VII. The Indian IaaS market
At present, the Indian market does not have a mature ecosystem that supports cloud IaaS services. A few players from the service provider segment such as Tata Communications, Wipro and NetMagic have announced services that are likely to evolve into more stable cloud offerings.
Some of the challenges the market currently faces include:
‘ Ecosystem maturity
‘ Customer awareness of services
‘ Connectivity
VIII. SECURITY
In this digital world where users are getting benefits of services beside that they always worry about their security. User has a satisfaction from cloud services that security against back-up, power failure, hard-disk damage, system crash but the data leakage or data access to the third party is still a question in front of them. Thus Data Security is the main concern. End Users think that the access from remote server whose location is also not known to them, in spite of that data is more secure if it is hosted under them.
The more sensitive data includes exams papers, employees’ accounts, research results, students’ academic records and much more in the institutes, universities, schools pays an important attention to take the data security steps.
Education sector should follow the various steps that come under data security which are as follows as:
1) There are several strict Data Protection laws and legal policy contract under which restriction of accessing data to third
party are signed between the service provider and the end users. Law makers also started to mark the legal issues that
denote the privacy and data security protection.
2) Data encryption should be done against the unauthorized access in the cloud. Data may be encrypted after the request and
before delivering it into the cloud environment.
3) Mask or de-identify the sensitive data to achieve the data security.
4) Should take care of the firewalls which are the main source of knowing the data location.
5) Adoption of private cloud by the organization is a great source of data security. High sensitive data should be kept inside the
institute and let other data to be externalize to achieve scalability and other benefits of cloud computing.
6) Technologies like HTML5 allow users to work offline when internet access is intermittent.
7) The contract should be read carefully by the institutes. They should seek legal advices before signing on the contract. Several
issues should be examined such as initial term of contract, present and future costs, penalties, data access security; should be
compensation restricted under the contract expansion.
IX. CONCLUSION
Cloud computing is growing rapidly in terms of computing services, resource utilization (hardware and software) or in other words Cloud is floating with huge data inside it with virtualization over the internet. It has a wide scope in education sector. Where Students are looking more interested in electronic gadgets as a great source of communication, Cloud Computing will be a welcome step in their life. Instead of keeping textbooks and heavy bags with them, they will prefer a world without textbooks having much more efficient way to store and access the lectures, assignment, research paper and virtual class etc. Let them give a chance to touch the sky limits via cloud for their future development in this competition era.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We take the opportunity to acknowledge sri satya sai university of technology & medical sciences, Sehore, MP, for their constant support and guidance in the research area of cloud computing. Their sincerity, thoroughness and perseverance have been a constant source of inspiration for us along with special thank to Dr. R.P.Singh (SSSUTMS), Sehore.