As I start to think about the return of the school year one of the things that I’m really going to try to implement is getting my students and more of the staff to use cloud computing options like Google Docs or Zoho Writer instead of local, proprietary word processing applications.

There are a couple of reasons why I’m going to really push to get more people in my building to use cloud computing options. First, we have a huge issue with computer availability for students. It is a very rare occasion when a student can use the same computer on consecutive days which means they have to either email attachments to themselves or save to our building/ district server. This leads to a second problem, server space and reliability. Every year we struggle with server space and reliability, using cloud computing options is one no-cost step toward alleviating these problems. The third problem that cloud computing can alleviate for my students is the “format incompatibility” problem of a student creating a document at home in Appleworks, but then cannot open the file at school because the computer labs are Windows based.

What is your opinion of using cloud computing in schools? Do you advocate for it? What do your administrators say about using cloud computing options? Leave a comment or vote on the poll posted on the right hand side of this page.