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Cloud Computing for EducatorsWhat is Cloud Computing?
Google is a leader in Web software and services, from email to word processing. Microsoft is playing catch-up and has produced some neat free services for the end user as well. There are many different options to use the "cloud" to interact and share with colleagues and students and many of them are free. Google Apps and Google Docs are some of the best known. Microsoft has come up with "cloud" services under the rubric of Microsoft Live, such as Office Live for users of Office that are also very interesting. Both of these options are available for free to all members of the Salem State College community. If particular Office Live is available to us since the College has a license for MS Office. The purpose of this page is to provide information and support for these services to colleagues at Salem State. On Fall 2009 there will be a workshop on these services offered through the Center for Teaching Innovation. Microsoft's Office LiveMicrosoft's Office Live Workspace is a great resource and you can use it from inside any MS Office application, such as Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. Since you have MS Office installed on your computer, why not use free Office Live Workspace for cooperation purposes. Office Live Workspace allows you to access your documents from anywhere, and share documents with students and colleagues. Free file sharing and online storage - Use Office Word, PowerPoint, and Excel with Microsoft Office Live Workspace - Access your files from anywhere. Let us look at some definitions first, since there are many terms that include Microsoft's new Live moniker. Office Live (http://www.officelive.com): is a free online storage and document sharing service: "Microsoft Office Live is a set of Internet-based services designed for consumers and small businesses interested in creating a website or storing and sharing documents online. As of 2009, it consists of two services, Office Live Workspace and Office Live Small Business." [source] Thus, obviously, we are interested here in the first of these: Office Live Workspace (http://workspace.officelive.com), which is "a Microsoft Office Live-branded online storage and collaboration service for Microsoft Office documents and most other common file types. The documents are stored on remote servers and can be made available to those who have access to the documents. The service also features shared calendars and task lists." [source] To learn how Office Live Workspace works, go to this simple intro page: http://workspace.officelive.com/en-us/how-it-works, and this video: http://workspace.officelive.com/en-us/Demos/ProductOverview Office Live is one of a number of mostly Web-based free services recently introduced Microsoft, termed colectively Microsoft Live. Among the services you will find: Windows Live (http://home.live.com/): this is "the collective brand name for a set of services and software products from Microsoft. A majority of these services are Web applications, accessible from a browser, but there are also applications that need to be installed. The URL for the Windows Live portal is http://home.live.com or Windows Live Home (http://live.com or http://www.live.comwill redirect you to http://www.bing.com, Microsoft's new search engine and Google's competitor). Some of the other sharing tools in Windows Live that may be useful to you: Windows Live SkyDrive (formerly Windows Live Folders), an online (cloud) file storage and sharing service; up to 25GB of free storage. Each file you upload has a unique URL, which you can use to share files with others. Windows Live Sync (formerly Windows Live FolderShare), which allows you to synchronize folders across computers, up to 20 folders (libraries). It does not store files online. There are client versions for Windows and Mac. Live Mesh: it synchronizes files across computers, like Live Sync, but also stores them in the cloud. There is some overlap among these three services. Simple explanations of the three of them, to help you figure out which one is right for you, can be found here, here, here, here, and here. My bet is that these 3 products will converge and Live Mesh will come out as the winner. Google AppsAnother popular free service is Google Apps and in particular Google Docs, which is part of it, used for collaboration with others. Anybody with a SSC email address can join Google Apps (platform) for salemstate.edu (Team Edition). Just head to this URL to open an account with your existing SSC address (you do not need to get a gmail (Google mail) account, though you can if you want to. Just head to https://www.google.com/a/salemstate.edu. Once you're in you will see that the free services available to you are Sites, Docs, Calendar, Start Page, and Chat. The one you are probably most interested in for collaborative purposes is Docs, but you may try the other ones as well. Google Apps is a platform of services for organizations (and individuals with their own domain name). This video Google Apps Quick Tour gives a good explanation. The Google Apps for SSC however does not include many of these services, such as email. Google Apps is being used increasingly in academic settings, as this video Why Google Apps for Education explains. Google Docs works best when different people are collaborating on a document or need access to a document. The video Google Docs in Plain English explains it very well. You do not have to be connected to the Internet to work on documents that are at the Google Docs server, as the video Google Docs: Working offline shows. Other optionsThere are many other free options for sharing documents and files across computers and across users. One of my favorite is Dropbox, which allows you to share files with yourself across computers and share them easily with others. Dropbox works with Windows, Mac and Linux computers. An small application is intalled and a special folder is created which is then synchronized with the cloud. Take the quick tour to learn more. I also recommend watching this quick video about it. If you have other favorite tools for sharing and collaboration, I would love to hear about it. Join the Online Educators Group for SSC faculty on Facebook.
Page URL: http://www.lrc.salemstate.edu/aske/cloudcomputing/index.htmLast updated: August 24, 2009 |
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