Cloud computing offers game-changing options for education.
Calls to improve K-12 education are routine. Business leaders, educators, and other stakeholders demand that our children acquire the knowledge and skills needed to grow our rapidly evolving economy. Yet, although digital resources have expanded learning opportunities, classroom pedagogy has not changed much in the last 50 years. Throwing more money at existing approaches will at best produce only incremental improvements.
Since the 19th century, schools have used textbooks to deliver instructional content. Textbooks, however, are expensive, their content starts to age upon publication, and they must be replaced periodically. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has called for California schools to shift to digital textbooks to save much of the $350 million that the state annually budgets for textbooks and instructional materials. Moreover, textbooks are hardly interactive and are isolated from the computing resources with which we have provisioned our schools at great expense. Textbooks met the needs of the 19th and 20th centuries, but they fall far short of 21st century needs. They are old-school delivery that supports old-school pedagogy.