WHITE PAPER ® World Ahead Cloud Computing

The Education Cloud: Delivering Education as a Service

The education cloud can simplify, add value to and lower the cost of education transformations

Introduction Five Key Elements to The massive proliferation of affordable computers, Internet broadband connectivity Education Transformations and rich education content has created a global phenomenon in which information and The five interrelated elements communication technology (ICT) is being used to transform education. Cloud computing shown in Figure 1 have consis- is beginning to play a key role in this transformation. tently proven essential to support This paper explains how an education cloud can provide affordable and high-value successful education transforma- education services that support 21st-century skill development. Additionally, the paper tion worldwide. outlines a general framework and specific actions that can help IT decision makers and These five elements help to cre- government leaders identify and meet the needs of the education community, including ate sustainable improvements in students, teachers, parents and administrators. education — improvements that By making ICT more affordable to implement and easier to integrate into classrooms give students the best possible worldwide, education can be transformed — and students across the globe can develop opportunity to thrive in the global the critical skills they need to compete and prosper in the today’s information society. economy.

Education Transformation Is a The benefits of integrating ICT into Global Phenomenon education have been established by a Education transformations can transcend variety of studies. Positive outcomes may economic and social barriers, providing include higher graduation rates, improved equal advantages and opportunities to ev- matriculation rates for higher education eryone who has access to ICT. In Portugal, and improved national academic rank- for example, it took just two years for a ings. On a broader scale, over time the nationwide effort to transform education national benefits of bringing ICT into the and achieve significant economic benefits. classroom have included improvements Computers are available to every in GDP, worker productivity and national primary school student in the country — competitiveness, as well as new jobs and Figure 1. The five key components of education moving Portugal to the forefront of digital the cultivation of entrepreneurship and transformations education while also creating nearly 1,500 innovation.1 new jobs and adding EUR 2.26 billion to the country’s economy.

Robert Fogel Principal Education Architect Intel Corporation The Education Cloud: Delivering Education as a Service

Figure 2. Cloud computing provides anytime/anywhere services that can be accessed from any device.

Cloud Computing Simplified From a user’s perspective, a cloud can There has been much hype about cloud make all of these (and more) services computing, and cloud computing has the available in such a way that the user does potential to play a vital role in education not have to be concerned with where transformations. But first, there remains a the services originate or even where the need to distill it into a practical, consistent, services are running. The services are just accessible framework for education. “out there” somewhere, in the cloud, and the user can access them at any time, from To understand cloud computing in the any device (see Figure 2). context of education, it helps to begin by understanding the notion of “service.” A In reality, cloud services might originate service is a type of function or in one place but actually run on a stand- capability that is accessible anytime and alone or cell phone, or on a server anywhere via a compute device such as somewhere in cyberspace. It’s also possible a laptop, desktop, handheld PDA or cell for a single service to be running on some phone. Some of the more common ex- combination of devices. Google Earth, amples of cloud services are Google Apps, for example, can run standalone on an Amazon EC2 and SalesForce.com. Other, individual laptop, but when the Earth image more generic services include wikis, blogs on the laptop has to be updated, those and e-mail. updates come from one or a combination of Google’s data centers around the world.

2 The Education Cloud: Delivering Education as a Service

The Education Cloud Example of an education cloud service: To support education transformations, Student ePortfolios cloud computing can help government The ePortfolio service is just one example leaders and IT decision makers answer key of a cloud service that can be delivered to strategic questions such as: the members of an education community. • What is the quickest, most efficient and A student portfolio is a valuable record affordable way to deliver education? of a student’s academic life. The record • How do I develop students’ 21st-century may include items such as assessments, skills and prepare students for the new evaluations, assignments, homework job market? and classroom projects. These portfolios are critical for managing each student’s • How do I encourage local innovation academic progress, and — when student within a country or region? portfolios are collectively reviewed by the • How do I share resources across districts, Ministry of Education (MoE) — they can regions or the entire country? also play an important role in managing With the flexibility and affordability of the performance and progress of an entire cloud computing, it is possible to answer education system. these questions and develop education Also called electronic portfolios or digital programs and strategies that also: portfolios, ePortfolios present significant • Simplify, speed and reduce the cost of advantages over paper-based alterna- development, integration procurement, tives. One reason is their accessibility. and operation and maintenance of ICT End users — which may include students, infrastructure teachers, parents, administrators and government officials (depending on the • Capitalize on worldwide innovation of implementation) — can access ePortfolios developers at any time, from computers, cell phones • Focus on the user experience and ex- or other devices. ePortfolios can be ac- pected outcomes, not on infrastructure cessed by teachers to issue assignments, • Simplify management of vendors and by students to access assignments. A school principal can use students’ ePort- • Provide better visibility of results and im- folios to monitor the performance of the pacts, using cause-and-effect analyses school, and parents can access their own for continuous improvement child’s portfolio in order to become more involved in their child’s education. Using cloud computing, the ePortfolio service can be designed in several ways. For instance, the service can run as a standalone service on a laptop, without connectivity. The service can also run from local school servers, from an MoE data center or from a third-party services provider that is accessed via the Internet.

3 The Education Cloud: Delivering Education as a Service

Figure 3. An education cloud includes both user services and IT services

Building an Education Cloud User services One of the first steps in building a cloud The “user services” shown in Figure 3 solution is identifying the “layers” of the illustrate a few of the many education- cloud, which include user services and IT specific and generic services the educa- services (see Figure 3). When you com- tion community can access from devices municate with vendor service providers, such as and PDAs. these services and their associated pa- It is important to create a “services cata- rameters need to be defined in a request log” that lists the user services that are for proposal (RFP) or similar document. needed in each education community. The services catalog — which may include a phased deployment plan, if some services need to be added over time — should be provided to vendors so that they know which user services they need to deliver.

4 The Education Cloud: Delivering Education as a Service

A services catalog can include education- User services also include generic ser- specific user services such as: vices, which often work with and support Education Services Available • An eAssessment service for managing education services. As shown in Figure Online 3, these generic services include e-mail student assessments Intel AppUp Center The Intel and social networks. For example, an AppUp Center at www.appup.com/ • Grade book, roster, lesson plan and class- ePortfolio service might employ an e-mail applications provides a resource room management services for teachers service as the primary interface between center and catalogue for cloud- • Content management services that the ePortfolio and its users. A student based mobile services. This site can teachers use to assign curriculum con- could then receive assignments from the also serve as a model for how an tent to students and that students use ePortfolio service via e-mail, and when education services catalog could be to access the assigned content the assignment is completed, the student created for the development and could send the completed assignment • An online community service that teach- distribution of education cloud ser- back via e-mail. ers use to interact with peers and share vices. Another example of a catalog lesson plans Users can also access generic services of education services is iTunes • A professional development service that directly, as when, for example, teachers University at www.apple.com/ teachers use to manage their career and students use their e-mail accounts to education/itunes-u. This site is a development path and become more pro- interact with peers, colleagues, parents large-scale distribution system for ficient on the use of technology in the and others. lectures, language lessons, films, classroom labs, audio books, tours, etc. IT services Skoool.com An example of content The services catalog can also include ad- Once the user services have been identi- services that can be integrated into ditional user services that are accessible fied, the next question concerns the type an education cloud can be found at from the cloud but are not directly related of underlying IT infrastructure that needs www.skoool.com. The site offers a to the delivery of education. These addi- to be in place to deliver the education and number of learning objects freely tional services might include: generic services specified in the services available for use via the Internet, • A fundraising service to track contribu- catalog. as well as a set of toolkits for tion and fundraising events In Figure 3, the bottom two layers open-ended learning. • A school asset tracking service to track describe the IT services that define the Education elements An example equipment and supplies infrastructure of the education cloud. of professional development ser- These layers include: • A school bulletin service to inform par- vices can be found at www.intel. ents and the entire community of school • Physical resources such as client com/education/elements, which activities devices, school servers, the school features a set of online, self-paced network, MoE servers, national communi- courses that focus on helping cation network, storage devices, etc. teachers become proficient with project-based learning, student • Virtual resources that simplify the collaboration and 21st-century management and access of the physical skills development. These courses resources by aggregating the physical can be integrated along with oth- resources into a collective pool of re- ers and made available though an sources. This aggregation and pooling is education cloud. commonly referred to as virtualization.

5 The Education Cloud: Delivering Education as a Service

Specifying cloud services • User interface — This specifies the in- When communicating with vendors, it is terface between a potential user and the Virtualization in the Cloud necessary to specify the parameters for service being specified. The interface is often implemented in terms of options Virtualization is key to the cloud the cloud services you want and need. and actions that can be selected or per- because it is through virtualiza- These parameters include the following: formed by a user. Note that there might tion that services can run on many • Function — This is the function or be multiple user interfaces for a given different devices and types of de- behavior of the service being specified — service. For example, an ePortfolio ser- vices. From teachers’ and students’ what it needs to do, or what capability it vice might have a user interface for a perspectives, it does not matter needs to have. For example, an ePortfo- teacher to make assignments, another where the services are running. lio service provides an electronic record user interface for a student who can of a student’s academic life. When physical resources are “virtu- use his or her portfolio to access assign- alized,” they can reside in a variety • Interface — This identifies the interface ments, another for a school principal to of physical locations. For instance, between the service being specified and monitor the performance of the school, to facilitate a rapid deployment any other services with which the ser- and still another for parents to access of services to a new school, the vice interacts. These interface(s) specify their own child’s portfolio. physical resources that are used input/output behavior in order to char- For each interface, the behavior may be to run those services might exist acterize the interaction. For example, an different and the AAA may be different. at another school, or be provided ePortfolio service might interact with When a teacher accesses the ePortfolio by a commercial services provider. database services and an assessment service, that teacher may be presented Once that school’s infrastructure is service, and perhaps also with a content only with specific options and actions, in place, then the services may be management service. such as issuing assignments or collecting moved to run on that school’s own a grade from a test. A student would be servers. Doing so could result in Authentication, authorization and ac- presented with an entirely different set reduced connectivity costs. cess (AAA) — This provides the primary security for the service being specified. of options and actions, such as accessing An example of a virtual resource For example, an ePortfolio service might content assigned by a teacher or taking a service is backing up students’ and permit access to the student for whom test. teachers’ client devices so that, if a particular ePortfolio exists, the stu- • Performance — This is an essential spec- those devices ever stopped work- dent’s teacher, the school’s principal and ification that defines the expected delay ing, it would be possible to restore the student’s parents. For each of these or time frame for the service to perform a student or teacher to another people, the access rights and privileges its function. In an ePortfolio service, for device. Other examples of virtual might be different. For example, the example, the MoE might expect to be resource services include virus pro- teacher can assign a test for a student able to view a summary of all students’ tection of clients and servers, and to take, but would not be allowed to ac- grades within a 48-hour period. Internet filtering for inappropriate tually take the test. The student may be content. able to access an assignment from the teacher, but would not be able to change the assignment.

6 Additional Cloud Examples and Resources Clarkstown Central School District The Clarkstown Central School District uses Google Apps to coordinate cur- ricula and resources within schools and • Cost — This is the cost of the service • Support — This is the required support across the district. Innovative uses of being specified. In some instances in expected for the service, and is typi- the calendar, shared documents and which a service is free and in the pub- cally specified in terms of a Service-level shared sites make it easy for teachers lic domain, there may not be any cost Agreement (SLA). to follow district curriculum plans, keep associated with that service; however, up with school-related events, and cre- • Physical location or environment — commercially provided services always ate and share curriculum resources.2 This is the physical location in which the have a cost model associated with service being specified actually runs. For Laboratory for Continuous Math- them. The range of possible cost models example, a country may not want any of ematical Education, St. Petersburg, includes: its student ePortfolios to be stored out- Russia This project, supported by an - Pay-for-use model: A cost is associated side the country. Or, part of a student’s HP Innovations in Education grant, with use of the service, either for each ePortfolio may exist on the local school connects students with scientific re- instance that the service is accessed or servers and part may exist on the MoE’s searchers, giving them an opportunity for the period of time that the service is data center servers. to experience professional research accessed. practices while also building their own • Level of connectivity — This is one technical skills. The students work - Membership or subscription model: of the most important parameters for with researchers from both scientific Typically applies a generic charge for a specification of a service. It defines the and industrial professions.3 period of time such as a month or year, level of network or Internet connectiv- after which memberships or subscrip- ity that is available for the service being Columbia Secondary School A part- tions have to be renewed. specified. There might be absolutely no nership between the New York City - One-time license model: A license is connectivity (offline), occasional con- Department of Education, Columbia purchased for a one-time fee. nectivity (offline/online), or always-on University, and the Columbia Second- connectivity (online). A common mis- ary School has led to the deployment • Footprint — The footprint describes conception is to equate cloud with the of cloud-based systems including a how the specified service gets delivered Internet (always online or always con- custom content management system to an end user. For instance, a service nected), but in fact cloud computing can and Google Apps. The students are could be streamed across the Internet, be employed in offline or offline/online using these cloud applications to do pre-installed on client devices, or pack- environments. research and to collaborate in new aged and sent to client devices. In hybrid ways.4 footprints, such as Google Earth, part of The most common level of connectivity the service resides on a client device and specified is an occasionally connected Eagle County School District The part of it is streamed. offline/online model. This model is often Eagle County School District in Colo- best, even for environments in which the rado is implementing a cloud comput- • Client device awareness — This is the network/Internet quality is extremely ing system that will make tools for ability of a service to be aware of the high, because it allows for mobile usage. e-mail, word processing, presentations type of device on which it is running or Mobile client devices are sometimes and calendaring accessible to everyone by which it is being accessed. Depending taken to places (airplanes, remote areas, in the district.5 on the device, the service may behave etc.) that lack a network connection. differently or have different capabili- Cloud-Computing Infrastructure and ties. For example, the same service may Cloud-based education services should Technology for Education (CITE) This be accessed via a laptop or from a cell support mobile connectivity so that project, from MIT’s Climate Modeling phone. The cell phone might be used to teachers can always be teaching and Initiative, looks at ways to use cloud inform a student that a project is due the students can access learning materi- computing resources to perform scien- following day, and the student would use als at any time, from any device. Ideally, tific research, both in university labs his or her laptop to complete the project. services should be able to run at differ- and in K-12 classrooms.6 ent levels of connectivity, such as across TeacherTube This cloud-based the Internet or a national intranet, as service is modeled after YouTube but well as from MoE data center servers, is designed specifically for teachers, third-party service providers, local school schools and homeschoolers. It offers a servers, or standalone teacher and stu- wide range of educational on a dent laptops. variety of topics.7 The Education Cloud: Delivering Education as a Service

Examples of Education Clouds Services integration The real power of education clouds be- When building a national-scale education comes evident when viewed from a user’s cloud or any large-scale IT infrastruc- perspective. As depicted in Figure 4, a set ture, it is a common practice to employ of users (including students, teachers, par- a system integrator (SI) to integrate all ents and others) can access a variety of of the pieces of a system. However, SIs education cloud services, using whatever can be very expensive and can consume device or devices they have access to valuable time in defining requirements (laptops, desktops, PDAs, etc.). A common and designing a custom system that often cloud infrastructure like the one illustrat- locks in the use of the SI’s own products ed in Figure 4 can scale services across and consulting services. dozens or even thousands of schools. Cloud computing offers different business If an ICT infrastructure is already in place, dynamics and a new way for systems an education cloud facilitates the inte- to be built. This creates a world of new gration of this existing infrastructure opportunities for services integrators, with new technology and solutions. The who are motivated to continually innovate cloud also “wraps around” the existing and deliver more and better value-added infrastructure so that it can be accessed services instead of relying on consulting as services. In instances in which there services. The cloud computing model is de- is little or no existing infrastructure, an picted in Figure 5, which shows a telecom- education cloud helps to make cloud-based munications company, or telco, serving as services available more quickly to schools, a services integrator for higher-education as well as to teachers and students. research.

Figure 4. K-12 education cloud example — user’s perspective

8 The Education Cloud: Delivering Education as a Service

Note that research collaboration is one of the most important functions for universi- ties and is often a challenge because of the need to share intellectual property (IP), as well as the prevalence of resource silos and the difficulty of creating user- friendly collaborative environments. In the example shown in Figure 5, three universities are engaging in oil and gas research, and each university has its own IP (in the form of services) that it is mak- ing available for the collective research. The telco integrates the IP from the three universities, along with the telco’s own value-added services and other cloud services that are publicly available. The result of the services integration illus- trated in Figure 5 is a virtual collaboration environment (VCE). When viewed from a user’s perspective in Figure 6, this VCE is shown to be a powerful tool that allows re- searchers to access — at any time, and us- Figure 5. Higher-education cloud example — provider’s perspective ing any device —a wide range of collected, cloud-based services. The researchers can focus on their research without concern for where the services originate or where and how they are running.

Figure 6. Higher education cloud example — user’s perspective

9 The Education Cloud: Delivering Education as a Service

Conclusion Achieve Your Cloud computing can help communities — You can play a key role in the and nations — transform education. An education transformation in entire world of knowledge can now be your country by implementing a made available to teachers and students sustainable, affordable education through cloud-based services that can be cloud. For information, guidance accessed anytime, anywhere, from any and support, visit device. Intel.com/ITCenter. By helping countries worldwide lower the cost and simplify the delivery of educa- tional services, cloud computing enables students across the globe to acquire the 21st-century skills and training they need to compete and succeed in the global information society.

1 See, for instance, “The Economic Benefits of Strategic ICT Spending.” http://govtech.firstlightera.com/EN/Microsites/1/Intel/WhitePapers 2 http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B5AOHQcS-cAeZDA1N2QzZjctOGYzYS00YjZiLThkMWUtNTUxMTRhYTcwN2Mw&hl=en 3 http://www.lcmespb.ru/ 4 http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/case_studies/columbia.html 5 http://www.edtechmag.com/k12/events/updates/infrastructure-the-highway-to-21st-century-learning.html 6 http://www-paoc.mit.edu/cmi/technologies/cloudcomputing.htm 7 http://www.teachertube.com INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH INTEL® PRODUCTS. NO LICENSE, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, BY ESTOPPEL OR OTHERWISE, TO ANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IS GRANTED BY THIS DOCUMENT. EXCEPT AS PROVIDED IN INTEL’S TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF SALE FOR SUCH PRODUCTS, INTEL ASSUMES NO LIABILITY WHATSOEVER, AND INTEL DISCLAIMS ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY, RELATING TO SALE AND/OR USE OF INTEL PRODUCTS INCLUDING LIABILITY OR WARRANTIES RELATING TO FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, MERCHANTABILITY, OR INFRINGEMENT OF ANY PATENT, COPYRIGHT OR OTHER INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHT. UNLESS OTHERWISE AGREED IN WRITING BY INTEL, THE INTEL PRODUCTS ARE NOT DESIGNED NOR INTENDED FOR ANY APPLICATION IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF THE INTEL PRODUCT COULD CREATE A SITUATION WHERE PERSONAL INJURY OR DEATH MAY OCCUR. Intel may make changes to specifications and product descriptions at any time, without notice. Designers must not rely on the absence or characteristics of any features or instructions marked “reserved” or “undefined.” Intel reserves these for future definition and shall have no responsibility whatsoever for conflicts or incompatibilities arising from future changes to them. The information here is subject to change without notice. Do not finalize a design with this information. The products described in this document may contain design defects or errors known as errata which may cause the product to deviate from published specifications. Current characterized errata are available on request. Contact your local Intel sales office or your distributor to obtain the latest specifications and before placing your product order. Copies of documents which have an order number and are referenced in this document, or other Intel literature, may be obtained by calling 1-800-548-4725, or by visiting Intel’s Web site at www.intel.com. Copyright © 2010 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. Intel, the Intel logo, and Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. Printed in USA 1110/PKO/RF Please Recycle 324486-001US