Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Journal 4 - "Computing in the Clouds" NETS-T 5

Johnson, D. (2010). Computing in the clouds. Learning and Leading with Technology, 37(4), Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-and-leading/digital-edition-december-janruary-2009-2010.aspx

In the article Johnson talked about the economic and practical advantages of using programs such as Google documents to make documents as opposed to using Microsoft Word. The advantage of this is that it is free and you do not waste any space on your hard drive by using it. Your work can also be found on any computer that has internet access, as all your work is saved online. Computing in the clouds also allows school districts to save money in moving from computers to netbooks, which are small computers with limited memory, hence the need for online computing, that are affordable.

Question #1: Would it be practical to ask parents to buy netbooks for their students, as mentioned of possibly occurring in the future in the article?
Unless, the price drops significantly from the 400 dollars someone would pay for it now then no. It is not fair to ask of students and their parents to come up with money for such a device for not all families can afford to spend their money on these items. Though I do think that schools can suggest that parents get them for their children, but the school needs to be able to provide the netbooks to those who cannot afford it.

Question #2: Would it beneficial for the students if in implementing this cloud computing they are never exposed to programs such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint?
I think that it would not benefit the students if we neglected to expose them to the other programs out there on computers especially since these programs are so frequently used today. Though maybe in a couple of years the systems will be a thing of the past, but if there are any other alternate way I think it is important to be aware of them and explore them.




 

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