Cloud Computing and Google for Education

      Teaching and learning is evolving for the last decades. I remember my parents telling us about their educational life spent in the libraries to seek information there. However, nowadays living in a world of Google glass, it allows us to access the world’s information easily and quickly.

Google has excellent features useful for education for both students and teachers. Google is free and its features make the teachers’ lessons more active and lively. One of the important benefits of Google Apps for Education is its security and privacy that helps to keep the data safe, secure and under control. It helps all the users to stay connected from anywhere as it is automatically saved in the cloud and can be accessed with any mobile device or tablet.

One priority for Google Apps is collaboration that distinguishes from other Apps. It saves a lot of time. For example, when students work on a paper in Google Docs, they save a lot of time as they see changes meanwhile they are writing rather than waiting for it to be sent via email. Another change Google has made is that learning is not only limited inside the classroom but is extended beyond the four walls of the classroom with nearly unlimited learning opportunities: just a click, a simple search and much and thousands of results. It creates a dynamic learning environment developing their 21^st century skills.

      I have been familiar with the main Google Apps and I used to mostly applying Google Docs during the study this year. The ones that attracted me a lot and I wasn’t familiar with are Google groups , sites and notebook. As a TEFL professional,  Google groups are effective for students as they give the opportunity for the students to use it easily and collaborate and communicate with others online. It can be used for online discussions between students, sharing information and notes with each other. They can also share research findings, collaborate on group projects and compare notes on classroom notes. With Google groups students can manage their personal lives and extracurricular activities easier helping students to become more effective outside the classroom.

       Cloud Computing is the next stage in the Internet’s evolution. The applications are not installed on user’s computer. We just need a computer and the cloud that can provide fast processing speed and large memory capacity. Cloud computing shares computing resources instead of having local servers or personal devices to handle applications.

It is a concept that involves a large number of computers that are connected via the Internet. As for the advantages of cloud computing, it allows companies to avoid infrastructure costs and allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster.