College Kids Go to the Cloud – 5,000,000 of them actually

More and more colleges are learning what the cloud can do for their campus life.  Providing teachers, students and administration with access to a common infrastructure enhances the overall learning experience while drastically reducing money spent. I have pasted a testimonial from Northwestern University below and provided a link to Google’s education page and I suggest reading a few items there so you can see the sheer magnitude of what is happening. Here I want to mention a couple of thoughts in regards to what these college recruits are going to expect once they get out of school.

• Real Time Collaboration – Emailing documents in circles, going through VPNs, and using thumb drives are examples of how data USED to move. Sure it still moves like that, however it has been proven that is not the most efficient or secure way of doing things and these college kids have seen it implemented on a mass level. Try telling them it can’t be done in a firm and you will get a blank stare.
• Anytime Anywhere Access – Internet as you know is the life blood to this whole conversation. These students seem to live in a connected state and they (and most of us by now) have now ingrained internet access into their lives. Home, work, cafes, parks, campus, phones, etc – they have rewired their lives in efforts to find a wire to the internet. They can smell the internet!
• Easy – We all know what easy technology is right? It just works. When you click it does what you expected it to do. When you try something for the first time you don’t have to read a ‘HELP’ section because you can just feel your way around. That is easy technology, and while it’s still not the norm, it is becoming the standard of those who gain market share.
• Fun – yes I said fun. Colleges are producing technology geeks in droves! People who have not only intertwined technology into their daily lives in order to get work done but also ones who go home and get right back on the computer to discover, share, and learn about the world and their friends.

To sum up: These college kids are what’s being called ‘digital natives’ and while that is important to know & understand that phrasing it’s more important that the non-digital natives are not the ‘digital naive’. Merging mindsets, not displacing or replacing, but merging will lead to a culture that is headed in the right direction.

Google Education Link