4 Benefits To Cloud-Based Learning

As learning becomes increasingly digital, access becomes increasingly important.

The Flipped Classroom, for example, requires technology that only a few years ago would’ve been considered dramatic. Broadband access, CPU speed and graphics processing, multi-media production in terms of sound, image, and film, and other innovations have placed significant demands on the technology industry.

Of course, as an industry grounded in business principles, it has been too eager to respond.

Among those most under-appreciated of those responses has been the “cloud.”

4 Benefits To Cloud-Based Learning

1. The cloud offers access to all of your data, all of the time. This supports improved “dwell time” with assignments and projects from a variety of locations, which further supports more diverse collaboration.

2. Speaking of collaboration, the cloud–with products including Adobe Buzzword, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Google Docs–makes sharing, viewing, and real-time collaborative editing of media not only possible, but engaging and, at times, spectacular.

3. The cloud also supports simpler and more compelling curation of digital work in pursuit of digital portfolios.

4. Smartphone apps, from Dropbox to SugarSync to iCloud–also offer mobile access to digital media. While smartphones aren’t ideal actuators of “desktop content,” the access to digital thinking is improving as the apps and app developers become more creative in content display.

While not all is perfect in the clouds–privacy issues, for example–it remains an important leap in digital learning that is still evolving.