If, like me, you started using computers back in '84, you know storage media have come a long, long way. I remember, back then, carefully labeling 5 1/4" floppy disks, carrying them around in the hard green case I bought to store them in, which I still keep as a sort of memento of another era. Then came the 3 1/2" "hard disks" (which is what everyone called them though, technically, they were still floppies). When the CD-ROM came along, I remember thinking, "Gosh, I could keep every single document on just one of those babies." Then it was the DVD with way more storage space, and finally the gazillion byte flash drive. (I haven't felt nearly as nostalgic for media that came out since the original floppy disk)--I threw them in the trash as soon as I had transferred the files to the latest media.) Our ability to store information more and more information on smaller and more convenient media amazed me. So I published my composition textbook on a flash drive (it's called Star Writer and is published by Fountainhead Press, if you're interested). My students love it because it is by far their cheapest textbook, and it doesn't weigh their already overstuffed backpacks down even further.
Great, right? Well, not so much. Every storage media has pitfalls, and the flash drive has been no different. Students lose the drives easily, leave them in pockets and send them through the washer, sit on them and break them. To make matters worse, someone invented a virus that could jump from the drive to a computer hard disk simply by plugging the drive into a USB port. I remember that when the infection hit us, it spread to every computer lab on campus in a matter of hours. But there's another problem with the flash drive that's even worse. Because it's so small, it's forgettable. Students virtually never bring their "textbook" to class because they simply don't see it sitting among all their other books.
This is where cloud computing comes in. "The Cloud" is basically the Internet, but it's a different way of understanding it. The "Web" is a metaphor for the various servers and lines running from server to server in a way that makes information attainable in much the same way as a spider using it's own web to track down a caught fly. The "Cloud" is a metaphor for understanding the Internet not just as a place to get information, but also as a secure storage space for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, PDF's, etc. But this storage space doesn't exist physically. Instead, it exists kind of "out there," like clouds in the stratosphere. Now this ability to store information has been available for a long time. But most hosts offering the storage had limited space for each user and limited capability for synchronizing documents. Because of companies like Google, however, the storage space has become virtually unlimited. This is because large server hubs have populated the globe, which means that companies like Google and Microsoft can share resources, thus increasing the Internet's power and capacity.
Why is this important? Well, it has a lot of advantages for both students and teachers. First, because the storage medium is not physical you don't have to worry about losing it. Second, it allows the work to be accessed from any computer anywhere. Third, the work is secured by a username and password, but it can be shared between two or more people, even allowing a group to modify a document without having to drive long distances to collaborate. And, finally, many of the services are completely free, while others are free with some limits. But even those that offer premium services, do so at a very modest price. Two good examples are Google Docs, which includes a word processor as well as a spreadsheet, presentation, and drawing application and Evernote.
What makes Google Docs especially great as a word processor is that it auto-saves every few minutes and it allows the user to go back to older versions of a document, which means that a writing teacher can check the revision history of a piece of student writing (if that writing is shared with her or him) and allows the writer to recover that stricken paragraph that he or she wishes hadn't been deleted. One drawback (although, in fact, in many ways it's a positive characteristic) is that Google Docs strongly resembles Office 2003. Students who've been using Office 2007 or 2010 may feel that Docs is too stripped down; however, all the functions are extremely easy to find, and most students don't need the complicated features of Word, Excel, etc. Another drawback is that if the Internet is down or your student doesn't have access to the Internet at home, it's not quite as useful. So it's a good idea to teach students the value of backing everything up onto at least two other media (a flash drive and an external hard disk, say). While I'm on the subject of Google, I'd like to go off on a bit of a tangent here. Google also offers a free calendar. The calendar is a miracle for smartphone users because by simply entering your cell phone number and asking Google to send your calendar information to your phone, you can easily get reminders of where you need to be and when.
Evernote is a storage service and note-taking space that offers a limited number of uploads per month for free (notes taken in the program are unlimited). Additionally, the free version does not allow uploading of certain types of documents, including those created with the Office suite. It does allow you to store screenshots, Web clips, photos, and plain text documents. These can all be filed in different notebooks as a way to organize them. They can also be tagged so that entering whatever tag or part of the document title you remember can help you find a document quickly. Unlike Google Docs, Evernote can be downloaded for free as a program onto your hard drive, which makes uploading files much easier and allows you to synchronize your files on several computers. Organizing the files is best done through the Web interface, in my opinion, because it seems easier to drag and drop. Also free for downloading is the Mobile Evernote application for smartphones. So if you need to check a memo you received via e-mail and saved into Evernote before that PTA meeting, you can access it from your phone. The premium service, which costs around $50 a year is worth the price for me. After my desktop crashed, I decided it was time to get all my files into the Cloud so that I would never have to worry about losing my life's work again (luckily, I was able to get my files onto an external drive, but it was touch and go for a while). I have a lot of files still to upload to Evernote, so having 500 MB worth of uploads per month will be useful. The premium service also allows you to share notebooks with other users, which means the tutors and graduate assistants in the Writing Center have access to all the files they need to keep the Center going.
There are plenty of other means of computing in the Cloud: using Blogger.com keeps your blog content in the Cloud. The years worth of chats I had with my dad on Google Chat before he died (which lends a special meaning to the metaphor) are all saved in the Cloud as well as all the e-mail exchanges I had with both him and my mother.
If you haven't dabbled in cloud computing, it's time for you to start. The 2009 Horizon Report listed cloud-computing as a technology teachers should deploy within one year. That's this year. Even though families living in rural school districts might not have access to the Internet, the Cloud can benefit both teachers and students, especially those with one-computer classrooms, because each student can have a different login to access Google Docs or Evernote to get to their work while keeping it secure and private from other students.
