Will colleges contribute to coming cloud computing explosion?

One zettabyte is equivalent to 1 trillion gigabytes

Cloud computing traffic will increase by the equivalent of 1.6 trillion hours of online high-definition video streaming in the next three years.

Higher education, with its growing acceptance of cloud computing services as the technology improves and campus budgets tighten, is hardly the only sector storing mass amounts of information on the internet, according to a new report from Cisco.

The Cisco Global Cloud Index, released in November, predicted that data traffic will see a twelve-fold increase over the next three years, reaching 4.8 zettabytes by 2015. Cloud computing is expected to be the fastest growing piece of the web’s data explosion.…Read More

Report: Mobile app use exploding on campus

The number of private universities deploying mobile apps rose to 50 percent from 42 percent in fall 2010.

Colleges and universities have made significant gains in deploying mobile applications over the past year, according to the 2011 Campus Computing Survey, the largest continuing study of higher-education technology use in the United States. But the survey also suggests that colleges have been slow to move key operational and research functions to cloud computing, and budget constraints continue to affect campus ed-tech services.

The 2011 survey shows big gains in the percentage of schools deploying mobile apps, and these gains appear across all types of institutions.

More than half (55 percent) of public universities have activated mobile apps or plan to do so in the coming year, compared to a third (33 percent) in fall 2010. Public four-year colleges also posted good gains (44 percent in 2011, up from 18 percent in fall 2010), while the numbers more than tripled among community colleges (41 percent this year vs. 12 percent last fall).…Read More

Internet2 bringing more cloud computing programs to campuses

HP will provide the cloud infrastructure for campus researchers.

Eleven universities will have access to advanced cloud computing services through Hewlett-Packard and two other technology companies that will provide the cloud-based programs at a discount for members of the research-intensive network consortium, Internet2.

The “above the network” features in the private cloud network announced by Internet2 officials this week include virtual meeting rooms for educators and students, telepresence, and desktop collaboration for professors and researchers, meaning colleges wouldn’t have to build their own cloud infrastructure.

Read more about cloud computing in higher education……Read More

Gmail favored at top U.S. universities

Gmail is the most popular cloud computing email service in higher education.

Hedging about outsourcing campus eMail services to Google seems to have faded in higher education, as 61 of the top 100 U.S. colleges and universities now use Gmail.

Google announced that more than half of the country’s best institutions use the company’s popular eMail after U.S. News and World Report released its annual ranking of the top campuses.

“While this list of schools represents traditions of academic excellence that span centuries, these institutions also clearly recognize the importance and value of modern technology in academia,” Tom Mills, Google’s director of education, wrote in a blog post.…Read More

Online lecture viewers can zoom, pan within videos using new software

Online videos of lectures are an increasingly popular review tool among college students.

New software that allows viewers watching online video lectures to zoom and pan around recorded images could provide an interactive and more cost-effective alternative to current lecture capture technology as college campuses move to make recordings of classes available online.

Developed by Stanford University electrical engineering professor Bernd Girod and his team of students, ClassX software allows viewers to zoom in to watch the professor write on the board or pan out to see the full classroom.

Read more about lecture capture technology in higher education……Read More

Smart phones driving lecture capture growth

Eighty-five percent of students say using lecture capture made studying 'somewhat or much more effective than normal.'

Viewing replays of a professor’s lecture anytime, anywhere on a smart phone has ballooned lecture capture use in higher education, as recent surveys show the technology remains popular on campus.

Watching and re-watching lectures online has long been among college students’ favorite educational technology, and making those recorded class sessions available via smart phone has led to a jump in lecture views, according to research from Tegrity, a leading maker of lecture-capture systems.

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Higher ed cautiously embraces the cloud

Only 5 percent of colleges say they aren’t considering cloud computing options.

There’s a nightmare shared by college IT directors who have moved some of their online services to off-campus cloud computing networks: Becoming the focal point of a massive cloud data breach, and having to answer to administrators, students, and parents about what went wrong.

Even this disastrous scenario hasn’t kept higher education from moving—however tentatively—toward the cloud, at a higher rate than many industries.

Read more about cloud computing in higher education……Read More

Google lures more colleges to Gmail with bigger inboxes

Google announced 25 new education customers this month.

It’s already higher education’s most popular eMail hosting service, and Google’s Gmail could attract more university IT departments after the company more than tripled its Gmail inbox size for educational customers.

Gmail inboxes will jump from 7 gigabytes to 25 gigabytes “over the course of the next few weeks” for schools, colleges, and universities that use the suite of online educational tools known as Google Apps for Education, according to a June 24 company announcement.

Read more about Gmail in higher education……Read More

Apple’s iCloud could help make digital instruction easier

Apple’s iCloud service will let users access their digital content from any device, but other companies (like Google and Amazon) offer similar services.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs re-emerged from his latest medical leave June 6 to show off the company’s latest innovations, which include a new cloud-based storage service that could make it easier to teach with digital materials downloaded from the iTunes or iBooks libraries.

Jobs was onstage for less than 30 minutes during a nearly two-hour event that primarily featured his subordinates. Ever the showman, he announced that the company had struck licensing agreements with all the major recording labels on a new music synching system.

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Higher ed taps IBM’s cloud computing

Cloud computing could be a tool in raising college retention rates.

IBM’s latest cloud-based services could give university IT chiefs new ways to analyze student and institutional performance just months after a majority of higher-education respondents admitted confusion about what, exactly, cloud computing is.

The IBM SmartCloud for Education, announced by the company June 2, uses advanced predictive analysis software – known as SPSS – that would let campus IT officials identify at-risk students in real time, serving as a technological tool in battling decreasing retention rates in higher education.

The cloud computing program is also available for K-12 schools.…Read More

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