Options to stay in the “cloud” at schools are slowly but surely making its way across institutions all over the country. IT professionals are in the best place to have insights and expert have the knowledge about how cloud-based computing can be useful or potentially dangerous for the K-12 environment.

“Here’s the thing, though: While IT professionals may be well-versed in the world of ‘cloud,’ a lot of parents, teachers, and district leaders are still trying to wrap their heads around the tech-age concept,” says Allie Gross of EducationDive.

Tim Murphy is a cloud client executive of CDW-G, according to the EducationDive article. Murphy spoke to EducationDive to shed some insight for parents, teachers and district leaders on what they may not know about the “cloud.”

“It’s computing capabilities delivered over a network as a service,” says Murphy. “That’s how CDW defines it.”

CDW-G is a company that specializes in hardware and software for various company and educational needs.

“We understand that not everyone is an IT professional,” explains Murphy, “especially in the K-12 environment.”

“What we like to do is help and solve problems within the school by using on-premise solutions or off-premise solutions to get that history teach back to his or her sole focus, which is teaching history – not teaching history and then taking time to solve and email problem. With cloud computing today, it makes it a lot easier to get back to that goal.”

He then explains that Microsoft Office 365 solved the problem of having to manage and archive data storage. The cloud is an application that allows the management of archiving and storing data seemingly simple, and reduces the responsibility for educators to have to worry about it.

In terms of security, Murphy stated that the cloud has essentially made storage and information more secure.

“You’re hearing a lot of negative news out there today,” says Murphy. “Edward Snowden, the NSA snooping, the Sony hacks--those are not necessarily the case.”

“What we’ve seen is that, by actually migrating cloud competing strategy, we’ve actually seen security increase because there are policies and procedures that were never put in place, and those have now been solved.”

While many debate the security and implementation of the cloud based storage system in K-12 as well as society as a whole Murphy provides some insight and words of security for those who use the cloud.

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Article by Navindra Persaud, Education World Contributor