peter in the cloud of education cloud computing in education at finki

Peter in the cloud of educationCloud computing in education at FINKI

Katerina ZdravkovaUniversity Sts Cyril and MethodiusFaculty of Computer Science and [email protected]

13th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering”

Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013

Contents

Introduction Milestones of cloud computing Cloud computing in education and in

research Peter’s fascination FINKI’s clouds Systems integration

Conclusion



Who is Peter?

Young and ambitious student attracted by ICTs

Successful competitor at international informatics competitions

He is aware that: In the new hi-tech era it is more than ever

inevitable to learn and acquire new knowledge in order to survive and progress in the present-day world

The increased demand for learning entails that the educational process should have the most important role



The challenge

Transformation of the educational system seems to be very slow

Any new technology introduced in education soon becomes obsolete and ineffective, often causing confusion among teachers and students, instead of offering better education



Peter’s first contact with FINKI

His home school was similar to Plato’s Academia

Experience with MENDO



August 2012, Peter’s enrolment

Enrolment coincided with BOI 2012 Will he be able to enroll? His colleague’s statement:

“While iKnow exists, you should not worry.”

eStudent Information System – iKnow



Peter’s first classes

He entered the amphitheatre trying to be closer to the blackboard

But, there was no blackboard there Teacher uncovered the whiteboard

and made a cable channels news’ presentation



First brunch

First visit to the labs Computer’s local storage was almost

empty But, there were several Internet

browsers He twitted a short message with his

first impressions: “The Faculty I chose must be in the clouds”



Peter’s research

What is cloud computing? Cloud computing and education Cloud computing and research



Milestones of cloud computing Early 1960s, MIT: Compatible Time-Sharing

System (CTSS) Invented:

Multitasking Time-sharing

2006, Amazon Web Services Initial aim: to create a balanced triangle

between software, infrastructure and platform



New devices haveaffected learning as well

e-Learning, m-Learning, s-Learning Cloud computing in education Key players: Amazon, Google, IBM,

Intel, Microsoft and Oracle



Cloudy education

2004, North Carolina State University: Virtual Computing Lab (VCL) powered by Apache Software

Applications like Matlab, Maple, SAS, SPSS offered to more than 40000 students

Oracle: Sun Cloud 2009, IBM: Cloud Academy (ICA) Sun Cloud retired, Exalogic Elastic Cloud

and Exadata Database Machine were born Google Apps: Google Docs/ Drive, Google

Talk, Google Video and Google Sites



Cloudy Learning Management Systems

BlackBoard/WebCT: xpLor Moodle + Amazon Web Services +

BitNami Cloud Hosting: BitNami Moodle 2.4

Cisco Networking Academy + Canvas: Cisco NetSpace



Cloudy research

IBM and Google Cloud Computing University Initiative launched Cluster Exploratory (CluE) program

Massive cloud cluster Hadoop performed more than 120 million computing tasks

The mission accomplished: research and education of outstanding universities had enormously benefited from this program



The transformation

Traditional blackboards Interactive whiteboards

Textbooks Digital contents Books Tablets, smartphones Internet cable connection Wireless

Internet Static E-learning 1.0 Dynamic E-

learning 0.2



Peter’s new smartphone

A tool for ubiquitous access to:e-mailsFacebook profileInternet

Can he access something else?



FINKI in Microsoft’s clouds

2012/13: more than 3000 students Partnership with Microsoft:

Office 365Microsoft Live accounts / FINKI Live

accounts Access to Microsoft software for

educational purposes Microsoft SkyDrive



Peter’s fascination

Blockbuster movies Computer Animation Club Cloud solutions used:

File sharing: Adrive, FilesFINKI, Dropbox Asset management system: Tactic Version control management: GitHub,

BitBucket, Google Project Hosting and SVN Antivirus: Panda Cloud Antivirus



Tactic and Bitbucket/Github



Online communication



Peter’s privacy concern

To join or not to join?



FINKI in social media

Enrolment procedure on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/FINKIedu

Staff on LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/company/faculty-of-computer-science-and-engineering---skopje

Future diploma: Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/finki-cse/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FINKI.ukim.mk

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CSEedu



Systems integration

Central Authentication System (CAS) CAS functionalities currently provided only to FINKI

students and staff e-Student Information System iKnow

Provided to University students and staff e-Learning systems: Moodle, LE e-Testing system: eTest and cloudy e-Assesment

e-Assesment currently implemented in primary and secondary schools in Macedonia

Online testing and laboratory exercises system eLab



FINKI’s HPC

High Performance Computing supercomputer: 84 servers

• Each server using 2 microprocessors (168 in total)• Each processor having 6 cores (1008 cores in

total)

2016 logical processors The blade servers are interconnected

through Infiniband 84 separate links



The ambition

Simultaneous implementation of all services by thousands of FINKI users proved their scalability

The ambition: to successfully extend services from Faculty to University and in perspective from University to national level



Cloud computing in education

Few years ago, cloud computing in education was “ante portas”

Nowadays, many cloud services have already become an ordinary solution

FINKI uses many software solutions and various platforms as a service



Is the perspective so pink?

It can be Prerequisite: standardization To speed up important activities and

functions, human beings standardise them We live in standard rooms, houses and

cities, we transport using standard vehicles: cars, trains, boats or planes

But, we still learn in traditional classrooms with chalks and blackboards



Inspiration for the paper

The intention to improve the learning process in line with new trends

It is not exactly Peter’s experience, but rather the teachers’ challenge to prove that education can enormously benefit from new technologies

The examples of recent modifications done at our Faculty are a significant contribution to education reconstruction and innovation

Students’ favourable feedback encourages us to go further



Conclusion

Emerging technologies and plentiful opportunities that they trigger don’t let us standardize learning and education

Possibility to learn always, everywhere and by everyone makes standardization of the learning process easier said than done

We should try to make it possible

Thank you for your attention

peter in the cloud of education cloud computing in education at finki

Documents

cloud computingcloud

cloud academy icasun

computing tasks

exalogic elastic cloud

slearningcloud computing

google video

google talk

virtual computing lab