Cloud Computing Applications in Education
The importance of cloud computing applications in the educational process, as well as training students of educational technology to use it in the production and dissemination of electronic content, is divided into importance for the trainer, second for the student trainee, and third for the educational institution, as indicated by many educational literature, including [1], [2] as follows: the next:
First: The importance of cloud computing applications for the trainer:
- Manage content and its sources from anywhere within the electronic cloud.
- The ability to develop to meet the needs of users without the hassle of technology.
- Provides high speed during program implementation, review and testing.
- Review, publish and modify content at any time quickly and easily.
- Implementation of virtual classes to develop students’ skills on a large scale.
- The existence of a central platform for the free exchange of ideas, information and content, which provides an optimal application of active learning strategies, especially the participatory learning strategy.
- Possibility to display results for a specific group or on a large scale.
- The ability to add files and control their viewing for authorized persons.
- The possibility of commenting on the work of the trainees during their work or after its completion.
- The possibility of uploading different files with all their extensions.
- The ability to search documents and libraries through electronic cloud software.
- Synchronous or asynchronous electronic school calendar for students.
- Recording what each student accomplished during the study on electronic cloud applications.
- The possibility of creating training programs for applications that need high capabilities, speed and proficiency in performance, such as the skill of producing and publishing electronic educational courses.
Second: The importance of cloud computing applications for trainee students:
- Enable users to easily access content from multiple sources through a single portal.
- Ease of participatory work for students trained in large, medium or small groups.
- Ease of exchanging files between the training students and each other and the trainer.
- An integrated ecosystem that offers different methods for easy searching and browsing.
- The ability to share electronic documents with all trainee students quickly and easily.
- Promote collaborative and participatory work on the same document at the same time.
- Making it possible to work from anywhere in the world (you only need the Internet), and it can use any device that can surf the Internet, whether it is a computer or a mobile phone.
- The trainees use this technology in the skills that need high capabilities, speed and mastery in performance, such as the skills of producing and publishing electronic content.
- Ease of use and quick access to information stored on it.
- Ease of working on a document at home and in college or educational institution.
- A unified work interface for all student trainees to create equality between them.
Third: The importance of cloud computing applications for the educational institution: –
- After the technological problems or maintenance of the system, they can only use.
- Continuity of information and data of educational institutions and their preservation and not losing them.
- Allow educational institutions to modify the database by adding, changing or deleting from anywhere with ease.
- The possibility of expansion and development by changing the settings only and in a few seconds.
- Low costs do not represent the burden of purchasing software, upgrading the version, or anything else.
- Save the files of the educational institution or educational lessons provided by its teachers at the lowest costs and the best global capacities available on the Internet.
- Provide sufficient spaces to work on developing educational skills that include video clips, flash clips, etc., and access them easily from anywhere and at any time.
From the foregoing, it is clear the importance of cloud computing for the trainer through the management of electronic content, regardless of place and time, at high speed, with the ability to download and search in libraries, in addition to what it provides to the trainee in terms of enabling access to content and sharing it with colleagues in the framework of collaborative work and obtaining appropriate reinforcement. As well as its importance for educational institutions in addressing their technological problems and the development of the institutional information system through the expansion and development of databases in the largest areas at the lowest possible costs.