Cloud-based Education: Scenarios for the Future

543221–LLP–1–2013–1–GR-KA3- KA3NW 1 School on the Cloud D5.3
Cloud-based Education:
Scenarios for the Future
October 2016
SchoolontheCloud.eu
School on the Cloud: Connecting Education to the Cloud for Digital Citizenship
tal Citizenship
543221-LLP-1-2013-1-GR-KA3-KA3NW

Deliverable Title: Cloud-based Education: Scenarios for the Future, Working Group 4
Deliverable Nr: 5.3
Date: October 2016
Version: 3.0
Dissemination Level: Public
Author: Prof. K. Koutsopoulos (Leader WG4: i-Future)
Contributors: Maria Meletiou-Mavrotheris (European University, Cyprus), Irene Pizzo (CESIE, Italy)
Project Title: School on the Cloud (SoC)
Project Nr: 543221–LLP–1–2013–1–GR-KA3- KA3NW
Project Start Date: January 1, 2014
Duration: 36 months
European Commission: Lifelong Learning Program - ICT Key Action 3 European Project
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission, Lifelong Learning
Programme of the European Union. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any us which may be made of the information contained
therein.

“School on Cloud: Connecting Education to the Cloud for Digital
Citizenship”
European Commission: Lifelong Learning Program
ICT Key Action 3 European Project
543221–LLP–1–2013–1–GR-KA3- KA3NW
Cloud-based Education:
Scenarios for the Future
Working Group 4: Deliverable 5.3
Author: Prof. K. Koutsopoulos
Leader WG4
Contributors: Maria Meletiou-Mavrotheris (Ch.7)
Irene Pizzo (Ch.6)
Due date of deliverable : May 2016 (Version 2.0)
Final date of deliverable: October 2016 (Version 3.0)
Start date of project : January 1, 2014
Duration : 36 months
Dissemination Level : Public
Abstract: As technology has become an agent of immense change, it has forced upon the
education system Cloud Computing which in the future will have significant ripple effect. The
description and evaluation of these effects represent one of the principal goals of the School on
the Cloud Network and is expressed in this document whose main objective is to review Cloud
based futures and methodologies. That is, responding to the need for examining future
enhancements of this technology on education this document presents a review of state-of-the-
art research on the future of Cloud based education and elaborates on foresight methods and
their application within the working plan of the School on the Cloud Network.
With the support of the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union

Summary
The purpose of education is to successfully prepare students for the future and therefore
education by its nature is a future-facing activity where all assumptions about and
aspirations for the future of education should underpin the concerns of the major
educational stakeholders such as the learners (what to study in the future?), the teachers
(what teaching methods that will best equip students?) and the administrators (what school
administrative actions are appropriate to face the future?). This goal is the objective of this
document whose aim is to develop scenarios built around carefully constructed "stories":
based on: trends, changes and challenges as well as experts concerns, towards a balanced
thinking about a number of possible alternative futures.
The document in addition to the introduction (chapter 1) and conclusion (chapter 10) has
three parts: The first one examines the European educational system, from a point in view as
to how its future is shaping and the major issues that need to be considered (chapter 2).
These issues will change future teaching and learning both in terms of trends and changes in
society, technology education innovations and all aspects of education (chapter 3).
The second elaborates on a foresight methodological framework in accomplishing the SoC
foresight efforts (chapter 4) and an elaborate description of the three methods chosen for
the network's foresight exercises, their application as well as their results, more specifically,
the Brainstorming approach (chapter 5); the Six Thinking Hats technique (chapter 6); and the
Delphi method (chapter 7).
The final, third part, presents the constructed scenarios which were aimed at discussing
different possible futures of education and taking the form of short stories of possible
futures, imagining how the education could look after 2025 (chapter 8). In addition, these
scenarios, based on trends and challenges reported in the literature and expressed by
experts' opinions, will determine our education system and thus their future expectations
should be taken into consideration for the new school on the cloud (chapter 9).

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Summary................................................................................................................. 4
1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 7
1.1. Background ......................................................................................................... 7
1.2. Justification.......................................................................................................... 9
2. THE EUROPEAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM ................................................. 10
2.1 The Network Centered Knowing Paradigm......................................................... 13
2.2 Cloud Computing................................................................................................ 15
2.3 The School on the Cloud .................................................................................... 17
2.4 The Pedagogical System in Europe ................................................................... 18
3. TRENDS AND CHANGES................................................................................. 19
3.1 Trends in Society................................................................................................ 19
3.2 Trends in Technology ......................................................................................... 21
3.3 Trends in Innovations ......................................................................................... 23
3.4. Trends in Education........................................................................................... 28
3.5 Provisions of Cloud Computing .......................................................................... 29
3.6 Trends in Schools............................................................................................... 32
3.7 Trends in Learning.............................................................................................. 33
3.8 Trends in Teaching............................................................................................. 37
3.9 Trends and Changes in Education Stakeholders................................................ 38
3.10 Changing of Other Educational Elements......................................................... 40
4. METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE SoC FORSIGHT................. 41
4.1 Foresight: Methods Chosen................................................................................ 42
4.2 Definitions........................................................................................................... 43
4.3 SoC's Future and Its Values System. ................................................................. 43
4.4 Methodological Approach ................................................................................... 45
5. APPLICATION OF THE BRAINSTORMING APPROACH........................... 46
5.1 Process............................................................................................................... 47
5.2 The Brainstorming Persona................................................................................ 47
5.3 Application.......................................................................................................... 49
6. APPLICATION OF THE SIX THINKING HATS APPROACH...................... 49
6.1 The Six Hats Technique. .................................................................................... 49
6.2 Objectives........................................................................................................... 51
6.3 The Process. ...................................................................................................... 51
6.4 Application of Six Thinking Hats. ........................................................................ 53
6.5. The Results. ...................................................................................................... 55
6.6 Possible Future Scenarios.................................................................................. 59

6.7 Concluding Remarks .......................................................................................... 61
7. APPLICATION OF THE DELPHI METHOD ................................................. 61
7.1 Delphi Definition and Historical Background....................................................... 61
7.2 SoC Foresight Procedure. .................................................................................. 63
7.3 Questionnaires' Application ................................................................................ 65
7.4 Analytical Presentations of the Result ................................................................ 68
7.5 Concluding Remarks .......................................................................................... 86
8. FUTURE SCENARIOS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING .......................... 87
8.1 Scenarios Design ............................................................................................... 87
8.2. Scenario 1: The story of Luc the Future School Learner ................................... 89
8.3 Scenario 2: The story of Chrisanthi the Future School Teacher ......................... 92
8.4 Scenario 3: The story of Jen the Future School Manager................................... 94
9. FUTURE EXPECTATIONS............................................................................... 98
9.1 Future Expectations in Technology .................................................................... 99
9.2 Future Expectations for Policy Making.............................................................. 101
9.3 Future Expectations for Research .................................................................... 102
9.4 The future Expectations of Uncertainties.......................................................... 104
10 CONCLUSIONS: THE FUTURE SCHOOL................................................... 104
10.1 Personalized................................................................................................... 105
10.2 Holistic............................................................................................................ 105
10.3 Integrated ....................................................................................................... 105
10.4 Technological ................................................................................................. 106
10.5 Knowledge - Centered.................................................................................... 106
10.6 United but not uniform .................................................................................... 106
10.7 Active.............................................................................................................. 107
10.8 Revised........................................................................................................... 107
10.9 Facilitative....................................................................................................... 107
10.10 Collaborative................................................................................................. 107
10.11 STEM focused .............................................................................................. 108
10.12 Multimodal .................................................................................................... 108
11. REFERENCES................................................................................................ 109
Appendix I........................................................................................................... 116
Appendix II......................................................................................................... 118

1. INTRODUCTION
Cloud Computing, the focus of this report, is a major technological breakthrough with
a huge potential for education. Through Cloud Computing, high specification state-of-
the-art software technologies can be accessed at any time, any place (Cheng,
Huang, & Lin, 2012). Thus, Cloud Computing provides powerful software and
massive computing resources where and when needed, allowing learners to interact
productively with their teachers and with each other in both formal and informal
education situations, and to become creators and developers of knowledge. Given its
huge affordances, Cloud Computing has become a very popular and powerful
educational trend (Joshi, 2015). Cloud Computing has been increasingly and widely
used in the field of education (Shi et al., 2014). It is projected that this trend will
continue, with Cloud technologies playing an even more vital and powerful role in the
educational field in years to come.
1.1. Background
This report presents the findings of the foresight exercises conducted by the Working
Group 4 (WG 4) of the School on Cloud: connecting education to the Cloud for digital
citizenship network (SoC). The main goal of SoC is to connect education to Cloud
Computing and to explore how education should respond to new ICT developments,
in the form of Cloud Computing, that are rapidly transforming the world of education.
That is, to narrow the existing divide between education and Cloud Computing by
developing guidelines for the education sector, by encouraging collaboration and
knowledge exchange as well as examining future enhancements of this technology
on education. The last goal is the main objective of this document whose goal is to
formulate scenarios for the future of European education. Moreover the report's
findings are hoped to push the boundaries of traditional research on education and
help resolve the complex societal challenges Europe is facing on Cloud based
education, which enables pedagogic innovations and collaborative policy
approaches. For this purpose, it links very diverse educational stakeholders having
various practitioners' views and policy making concerns, through foresight exercises,
together with the knowledge existing in the literature.
It should be noted that today's Cloud capabilities are already a remarkable catalyst
for creativity, collaboration and innovation, providing opportunities that would have
been impossible to imagine a couple of decades ago. If one had predicted at that
time that today's students can freely access images from any place on the world,
interact with persons from everywhere on earth and search practically an infinite
volume of data with a simple click on their PCs, one would have been taken for fool
(European Commission, 2009).

As a result, the need to thoroughly examine and evaluate the interface between
education and Cloud Computing, exploring how teaching and learning should
respond to new ICT developments, in the form of Cloud Computing, as well as
examine how education will be transformed in the immediate future was a major
concern for many ICT experts and educators. Some of them had an opportunity in a
meeting for ICT in education in Spain on April 2012, to discuss them. These
discussions resulted in an idea for a School on Cloud proposal which was submitted
and approved creating the School on Cloud: connecting education to the Cloud
for digital citizenship network (SoC).
The aim of this network is to overcome the existing divide between education and
Cloud Computing, but looking at this issue is not an easy task as you might have
been led to believe. Although the future of teaching and learning is expected to be in
the Cloud, there remain many issues to be resolved, but most importantly their future
has not be studied or documented together as they should. That is, although there is
a rich production of research projects and applications on the future of Education or
of Cloud Computing examined separately, the literature has yet to provide answers to
the combined issue on the future of education based on Cloud Computing. In other
words, presently there is a need for examining the future of Cloud based Education,
which has to address both areas as they are combined and interact.
In response to that need and within the SoC framework for a combined approach to
Cloud based Education, the Working Group 4 (WG 4) has been established and is
charged with examining “Future scenarios for Education on the Cloud”. The goal of
this group is to examine a series of issues related to the future of the interface
between education and Cloud Computing. More specifically, the objectives and
deliverables of WG 4 are to:
 Review the state-of-the-art research on the Cloud and produce a research
report on the state of the art and methodologies of “futures” thinking (Deliverable:
D5.1). This deliverable has been produced and accepted by the internal and
external evaluators and its results are guiding the following tasks of the WG.
 Prepare and run a workshop on futures at the second summit conference
(Deliverable: D5.2). The workshop has taken place at the meeting in Palermo Italy
and has provided the data required for the next deliverable.
 Use the data from the partners' conference contribution to the SoC foresight
exercise, which was focused on the major issues affecting the future use of the
Cloud Computing in education, to create a report on scenarios for the future
(Deliverable: D5.3). The report at hand is the deliverable required and its aim is to
develop scenarios built around carefully constructed plots based on trends and
challenges as well as experts concerns, towards a balanced thinking about a
number of possible alternative futures.
 At the final project meeting, a presentation should be given, titled «The Future
of Education on the Cloud» (D5.4), presenting the outcomes of the research

(D5.1), the foresight exercise (D5.2) and the report of the future scenarios
developed (D5.3).
1.2. Justification
The purpose of education is to successfully prepare students for the future and
therefore education by its nature is a future-facing activity where all assumptions
about and aspirations for the future of education should underpin the major
educational stakeholders such as the learners (what to study in the future?), the
teachers (what teaching methods that will best equip students?) and the
administrators (what administrative actions, such as curriculums, are appropriate to
face the future?). Therefore we cannot continue educating our students in ways that
address education needs of the past (Fullan & Langworthy, 2013). As Wellman
(2015) has said "At this point we appear to have 19th
century curriculum, 20th
century
buildings and organizations and 21st
century students facing an undefined future".
That is, the world has changed in ways that we are not always able to understand
and accept, but nevertheless we need to prepare students to face these changes. As
a result, it is not surprising that around the world, there are foundations, public and
private partnerships, government initiatives and commercial entities leading calls for
a redesign of the 21st century education.
Moreover it is not less surprising to the education community that a new, fresh,
authentic and unbounded educational approach is required to educate students for
the complex and challenging future (Gialamas et. al., 2013). This implies that there is
a need for the conception of changes in teaching and learning, which can be
expressed in two clear and unambiguous questions: what the education system
should be, and it is related to the European trends and challenges in education? And
how can we go about determining it, which is connected to the role of ICT in the form
of Cloud Computing?
It should be self-evident that in order to establish the right approach in answering
these questions, it is necessary to understand the issues that underline the reality of
the European pedagogical system and the role the ICT, in the form of Cloud
Computing, plays in it. That is, there is a need to first discern the existing education
system in order to detect the important issues requiring attention and then formulate,
using the appropriate methods, the scenarios that can provide answers as well as
suggest possible solutions.
This approach will be followed in this report. More specifically, the report provides:
 A discussion of the principle issues that underpin the European pedagogical
system
 A discussion of the elements that characterize Europe's trends as they relate to
the future of teaching and learning
 A discussion of the elements that characterize Europe's challenges as they
relate to the future of teaching and learning

 The methodological framework for the SoC foresight exercises.
 The initial foresight application of the Brainstorming method.
 The application and results of the Six Thinking Hats foresight method.
 The application and results of the Delphi foresight method.
 A set of future scenarios for teaching and learning in the context of the SoC total
foresight effort, and a set of projections of educational developments over the next
fifteen years.
 A discussion of the challenges that these scenarios and projections imply for
the design of future teaching and learning.
2. THE EUROPEAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
In examining the European educational system, from a point in view as to how its
future is shaping, four issues can be discerned. The first issue is: which are the basic
concepts related to teaching and learning, in order to address the required changes
in the future. Even a cursory review of the innumerable reports and policy decisions,
including those by the European commission which has adopted a strategy for
«Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe», shows: on the one hand
there is a need to find a way in designing an environment of engagement with
creativity and innovation, which should be the educational norm for all educational
institutions, or provide the necessary educational unity so that all schools will have
equal treatment. That is, all academic institutions have to be provided with equal
educational opportunities and experiences in order for the education process to shift
in ways that alter the approaches we catalyze learning and innovation. In other
words, to design a system that has a norm of what should be available to all
education institutions or create a pedagogic unity in order for the European
educational environment to become efficient.
This position, however, is based on the notion that the way to the future and progress
in education is only towards an efficient educational system determined and
operating within a global neo-liberal economy (Friedman, 2005). And it is towards this
economic theory that the European Union exhorts education stakeholders, mobilizes
them, justifies investment in new technologies as well as rationalizes curriculum
decisions. There are two forms of discourses to that position: from those who accept
the neo- liberal economy and consider technology-enhanced learning as an essential
modernizing tool for education (Negroponte, 1996; Lego, quoted in Jenson, 2006;
Prensky, 2005; Heppell, 2009), but who themselves are subject to critique from the
area of sociology of the future (Bell, 1997; Adam & Groves, 2007), from critical
studies in education (Gough, 2000; Robertson et al,. 2007) and from economists
(Stiglitz, 2006). The other and more important criticism comes from those who are
concerned with resisting the uniformity imperialism leading to inevitable and universal
educational approaches in the present and in the future. The idea of a uniform,
singular and inevitable trajectory in the face of which education stakeholders in
association with local conditions have no role to play, has been the subject of critique
from various fields. By testifying to the need of diverse alternative trajectories (the

end goal remains common, but the way to achieve changes) now and in the future,
many researchers who contribute to the educational technology field are arguing for
non-uniformity approaches to the future (for example, Gee et al., 1996; Apple, 1997).
As a result, on the other hand, there is a need in creating an educational system
which can inspire all school units to develop the means to transform their own identity
into a powerful tool in designing their teaching and learning practices or curriculum
structures. An identity which is expressed by each educational institution's needs and
expectations and is determined by the language, the culture, the particular
conceptual structures of education and other factors which can be found among the
diverse ethnic, cultural and regional groups that inhabit the European continent. In
other words, there is a need to find the ways to design the individuals' personal and
communal learning space based on their identity, in order to move away from
homogenization and a non-effective educational environment. An environment that
represents the driving force that presently shapes (actually it is intensified with
policies such as the bologna accord), the European education scheme.
Therefore, the idea of education as a singular, inevitable trajectory in the face of
which educational stakeholders and identity factors have no role, is not acceptable by
a growing number of scientists working on present and future education studies
(Beare & Slaughter, 2001; Inayatullah, 2008). Moreover, the notion of empowering
education stakeholders and communities to envisage and take action to build
alternative and identity desirable futures has started to have many supporters. A
characteristic example is the initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Fablab that aims to create the means to build new educational futures in the hands of
communities, learners and educators. This position can become clear by
paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln that "the best way to predict the future is to invent it,
by taking into account identity factors".
The second issue is: what is the conceptual basis upon which these two fundamental
needs and their attendant changes can be attained. In response to that, it should be
pointed out that the Networked Information society, which needs to be interposed in
education in the form of the Network Centered Knowing paradigm (Koutsopoulos &
Kotsanis, 2014), is unleashing two powerful forces on teaching and learning. Both of
these can be available to practically every educational institution and are related to
their access to high-speed networks. The first force empowers education
stakeholders of any school, anywhere to have an easy access and use of ICT in the
form of Cloud Computing. As a result, all education stakeholders can discover,
consume and produce information resources and services and thus the educational
system can provide the needed unity in teaching and learning. The second force
provides ubiquitous access to open content and standards as well as techniques for
virtualization, making it possible to leverage education through identity related
programs in unprecedented ways. What appears to be emerging is the need for an
education system where its stakeholders have at their disposal teaching techniques,

learning practices and many educational related services which allow them to design
their own programs, negating the need for educational uniformity.
The third issue is related to the means required to achieve, within the network
information society and the required educational paradigm, the concept of unity
without uniformity. It is suggested that Cloud Computing, which is the fundamental
instrument in a Cloud based educational environment, can fulfill all the earlier
mentioned educational requirements. Indeed, Cloud Computing represents a
fundamental change in the way computing power is generated and distributed. The
literature (Johnson, 2012; Bradshaw et al., 2012) indicates that this technology can
be a powerful way to apply a new educational approach. Moreover, as IBM (2012)
has declared “with cloud computing in education, you get powerful software and
massive computing resources where and when you need them (and we may add in
any way you desire), in order to apply new educational approaches ... Cloud services
can be used to combine on-demand computing and storage, familiar experience with
on-demand scalability and online services for anywhere, anytime access to powerful
web-based tools”. That is, it can support an educational system providing a Cloud
based education with all the attendant benefits to educational stakeholders.
Finally, the last issue raised is: what is the educational environment within which to
work or how to practically apply to the classroom the concepts presented previously.
The results of several Cloud based education projects (Donert & Bonanou, 2015;
Malmierca. et. al., 2015: Lazaro et. al., 2016) indicate that these objectives are
achievable in a new school, the School on the Cloud (SoC). The reason is that as
learning becomes increasingly digital, online access becomes the necessary vehicle
for the emerging Cloud-based developments (Donert, 2013) and thus offers an
educational system, which is not only an efficient (provides unity), but also an
effective (avoids uniformity) way to access and administer education. That is, the
new School on the Cloud provides an approach that aligns with the way we should
think, share, learn and collaborate as it is determined by the network information
approach that is limited nowadays, but will increase in the future and determines
many aspects of our activities, including education. In other words, the new School
on the Cloud can offer an opportunity to transform the role of education stakeholders,
as they help young people to access any learning at any place and any time from any
teacher with the right expertise, but within an identity determined framework.
From this examination it should be evident that in the European pedagogical system
there is a set of conditions that need to be achieved for a successful future. More
specifically, there is: a need to work within a susceptible to pedagogical conditions
educational paradigm; to utilize a new methodological approach which can provide
the instruments to be able to do so; and to apply a learning environment which
provides the framework to achieve the previous tasks. All of these paradigms have
as a common denominator the notion of integration that can be achieve through
Cloud Computing. These needs and their characteristics (shown schematically on
Fig.1) are examined in the next sections of this report.

Figure 1: The Education System
2.1 The Network Centered Knowing Paradigm
At the onset, it should be declared that at the centre of the pedagogic approach
towards teaching and learning should be the concept of unity without uniformity. But
this leads to the position (Koutsopoulos, 2015b; Miguel & Lázaro, 2016) that not only
the traditional Teacher Centred instructing paradigm, representing an instructing
approach, as well as the much herald present approaches to education, defined as
the Student Centered learning paradigm focused on a constructivism based learning,
are now absolute and the immediate future belongs to the Network Centred knowing
paradigm where knowledge is achieved through integration and is based on Cloud
Computing. More specific, it is suggested that in the last few years teaching and
learning, through two parallel changes in the way education is perceived and is
practiced, have gone through two paradigm shifts (Fig. 2), as Kuhn (1962) considers
them, and are briefly examined next.
BASIC CONCEPTS
IN EDUCATION
EDUCATIONAL
NORM
IDENTITY
BASED
DESIGN
NETWORK
INFORMATION
SOCIETY/PARADIGM
CLOUND
COMPUTING
SCHOOL
ON THE CLOUND
OPERATING
FRAMEWORK
/PARADIGM
EDUCATIONAL
ENVIRONMENT
EASY ACCESS
UBIQUTUS ACCESS
CLOUND BASED
EDUCATION
SAME
OPPORTUNITIES
TO ALL
LOCATION
IS NOT A FACTOR
UNTY
WITHOUT UNIFORMITY
APPLICATION
INSTRUMENT

Figure 2: Paradigm shifts in education
For a long time the traditional Teacher Centred instructing paradigm was the
exclusive environment within which the education system operated. This paradigm
was characterized by a mono-disciplinary environment (education was the exclusive
realm of educators) within which a «fragmented» approach to educational needs and
obligations was prevalent and where the teacher alone transmitted information to
students who passively listened and acquired facts from the simple transmission of
an instruction based curriculum.
This paradigm has been replaced (the first paradigm shift) by the Student Centered
learning paradigm representing the prevailing nowadays educational environment.
In this paradigm learning is expressed in the form of a set of separate relations,
interdependences and interactions leading to a multidisciplinary framework in
education, which is focused, as previously, in a descriptive way on both individual
learners and on learning itself. But this notion of a descriptive-multidimensional
education requires computer technology which is based in a world of computers and
interactive software (Dede, 2008), leading to a constructivism approach in practicing
teaching and learning.
Both these approaches cannot satisfy the present complex and challenging
conditions and even more so those that will prevail in the future education
environment (Koutsopoulos & Kotsanis, 2014; Koutsopoulos, 2015b). As a result, a
new Network Centered knowing approach is needed (the second paradigm shift),
which requires an interdisciplinary approach leading towards the integration of
all possible learning actors and approaches in order to overcome the
compartmentalization of knowledge. However, such a regard of teaching and
learning establishes a holistic education which requires prescriptive learning (the way
Mono-
disciplinary
Fragmented
Learning
Multi
Disciplinary
Descriptive
Learning
Inter
Disciplinary
Prescriptive
Learning
Teacher
Centered
Instruc ng
Student
Centered
Learning
Community
Centered
Knowing
CONCIDERING EDUCATION NATURE OF LEARNING PRACTICING EDUCATION
PARADIGM
NATURE OF TEACHING
Instruction Traditional
Intergrated Cloud Computing
Constructivism
Computer
Technology

students should learn) as well as encompasses all stakeholders in different ways,
with the use of Cloud Computing.
2.2 Cloud Computing.
In order to appreciate the Network centered knowing paradigm's contribution towards
fulfilling present and future pedagogic requirements the concept of Cloud Computing
needs to be to fully understood as well as been realized how its components can be
utilized in the operation of such an educational approach. There seems to be many
definitions of Cloud Computing around. The global management consulting firm of
McKinsey found that there are 22 possible separate definitions of Cloud Computing,
none of them dealing with educational concerns. In fact, no common standard or
definition for Cloud Computing seems to exist (Grossman, 2009; Voas and Zhang,
2009; Fadil, 2015). However, despite the many definitions and the various terms
suggested by many computer experts and Cloud users, the concept of Cloud
Computing can be described as an ICT technology that can be fully represented as a
three dimensional space consisting of the characteristics axis, that includes: On
demand service that includes: Network access, Resource pooling, Rapid elasticity
and Measured service; the type of service axis that includes: Infrastructure,
Platform and Software; and the form of deployment axis that includes: Private,
Community, Public and Hybrid (NIST, U.S Department of Commerce, 2013;
Koutsopoulos & Kotsanis, 2014), creating in this way a framework whose axes are an
integral part in designing an educational system, which can meet pedagogical needs
of the future (Koutsopoulos, 2015a).
In addition, this necessary for today's and for the future's conditions Network
Centered knowing paradigm, which promotes Cloud based education, represents a
framework which can successfully serve and support with the same resources and
the same opportunities as well as provide the means to design according to local
needs and conditions all education institutions. That is, Cloud Computing offers an
ideal environment for the fundamentally important unity without uniformity concept in
education.
Indeed Cloud Computing represents an instrument which can successfully serve and
support: multitasking, flexibility, the ability to handle a large number of applications
and to meet changing demands, as well as access to stored files, e-mails, databases
and other applications from anywhere at request. It represents a familiar and
appropriate tool for today’s education participants (the first generation to grow up
within the digital technology era). Moreover, it can support with the same resources
as well as provide the same opportunities to all major education stakeholders
(students, teachers and administrators) no matter where they are located and thus
qualifying as an ideal environment of educational unity. Thus, Cloud Computing
offers unimaginable capacity, among others, in using technology to connect people
across vast distances and store and share information in ways that provide access

virtually from anywhere (Ferrari, 2015; Donert and Bonanou, 2014). This report in
examining Cloud Computing, without ignoring the existence of sizeable attendant
issues (i.e. cost, security, law issues etc.) that must be addressed, it focuses on the
issue of location as it relates to education.
With regards to the future role of Cloud Computing it should be noted that “Cloud”
refers to machines located in large data centers, which raises a host of interesting
questions about the role of location in shaping the impact of Cloud Computing and
the level of services available to education stakeholders located at any education
institution (either in a school at the centre of a city, in a remote village or in a Roma
reservation area). Cloud Computing by centralizing information and computing
resources (quite contrary to the imagery that the name «Cloud» evokes) transects
location constraints imposed by users and the Cloud itself. Moreover, Cloud based
education although situated on the opposite end of the distance education spectrum
with Moore's Theory of Transactional Distance (Moore, 1991), and avoiding most of
its shortcomings (Hill et al., 2009), it shares the basic principle that cognitive space,
functioning to overcome physical distance between learners and instructors, or
teaching/learning methods or materials, or curriculum etc. is an acceptable and
beneficial approach to education. As a result, the unusual combination of the great
abilities offered by Cloud Computing and the ubiquity in providing Cloud based
education, negate the necessity for physical closeness of the educational factors and
the need for locally available educational recourses, thus raising serious questions
about the universal value and utility of location in education.
For a balanced approach, however, the issue of location in education should be
considered in terms of the dictum «Geography matters but not Distance». More
specifically, on the one hand as ICT developments, in the form of Cloud Computing,
will be continuously diminishing the «need of presence» in remote interactions. Such
interactions are developing not only between families, friends and co-workers, but
also between education stakeholders. The notion of being «together apart» is
becoming a familiar aspect of working, interacting and entertaining as well as in
educating ourselves. That is, the separation of «information resources» from physical
locations with the coming of Cloud Computing has become «natural», resulting in the
diminution of the importance of location.
On the other hand, Geography still matters because Geography will continue to
influence the access of individuals and groups to digital networks, because location
will continue determining in most cases their pricing, infrastructure, legal constraints
and regulation. Moreover, the «face to face» interaction will retain its importance,
especially in terms of the social and educational aspects of our lives, given that
physical proximity is paramount for most of us. For example, people will continue to
use «place» and physical location as a marker for identity, which as it was shown it
plays an important role in education among other areas of human endeavors.
In sum, when someone familiar with Cloud Computing will be asked the question of
the role of location in education, he will surely chuckle and reply something akin to:

«The location of the Cloud user and of the Cloud itself is irrelevant. Anyone is able to
tap into the power of the Cloud, located at any place, from anywhere». This answer,
while technically and empirically accurate, misses an important issue, namely: Cloud
Computing negates the necessity of considering location as a factor to reckon with,
at least when considering «non-typical» (i.e. rural and remote schools) and
consequently the need to impose upon them «uniform» teaching and learning
practices or curriculum structures that developed centrally and applied in "typical»
urban schools.
2.3 The School on the Cloud
The basic principle that «Technology changes, Education survives» signifies the role
of education as a societal necessity now and in the future and the need to explore
their potential implications to education. It has shown that ICT changes, in the form of
Cloud-based technologies (Pallis, 2010; Koutsopoulos, 2015a), provide the power to
fundamentally change how education should be approached and practiced, creating
the need for a new school, the School on the Cloud.
However, the new School on the Cloud in order to achieve such goals has to address
the following two key questions: How should education respond to Cloud-based
technologies? What is the impact, now and in the future, on education stakeholders
and teachers? Results from the limited application of the School on the Cloud
educational approach has shown that it brings many benefits to education as well as
accelerates trends and developments at the interface of Cloud Computing and
education (Armbrust et. al., 2010; Donert and Bonanou, 2015; Malmiera et al., 2015),
which in turn increase the ability of stakeholders to adjust or alter their educational
objectives. Basically, these applications of Cloud technologies in the classroom
indicate that in answering the two questions, in essence their work reaffirm the need
for the changes mentioned previously as well as create the foundations in applying
them. The School on the Cloud is not anymore a novice application of Cloud
Computing to education, which promises to deliver many exciting things. It is already
a reality and there are many successful implementations (Johnson, 2012; Bradshaw
et al., 2012; Malmierca, 2015; Donert and Bonanou, 2014). The School on the Cloud
is a new and different school that has been born, is partly operating now and is going
to stay with us at least in the foreseeable future.
In addition, the operation of schools on the Cloud offers a range of resources and
services such as infrastructure, service's solutions, the introduction of new processes
etc. (Bradshaw et al., 2012). The School on the Cloud as a Cloud based approach it
provides to every educational institution the conditions to have equal opportunities,
recourses and possibilities (norms in education). Moreover, these schools by being
on the forefront of Cloud Computing technology provide to education a series of
innovations which offers to the teaching and learning system the ability to be
adjusted, altered or revised using identity factors. That is, to design the way in which

education institutions, students and teachers are able to use equipment, applications
and subjects' content and thus to overcome uniformity constraints (IBM, 2010).
In sum, the School on the Cloud offers to its students a series of very important
competences, which allows them to face the developing pedagogical requirements,
such as:
 Digitalization: Refers to their ability to efficiently, confidently and critically use the
new ICT technologies in order to search, sift, organize, manage and evaluate
information, in an efficient and targeted to their individual needs approach.
 Learning: Is related to students' ability for learning to learn. That is, students are
motivated to pursue their own learning progress and knowing how to process
information, they are assigning meaning to it and converting it into knowledge.
 Understanding: Is associated with students' global understanding. That is, by
overcoming uniformity constraints they can acquire the competence of
understanding in order to be able to analyze the surrounding world, be social and
part of the universal society.
 Collaborating: Corresponds to a crucial skill that needs to be learned and
practiced from early on in education, and Cloud based education can support it.
That is, students need to learn to: listen, respect, negotiate and even accept ideas
express by others, understand and work in teams and different roles and finally
participate in communal activities.
 Updating: This skill refers to the ability of students to use the recourses of the
Cloud in order to be prepared for the continuous changes and developments as
well as continue updating such skills as: autonomy, lifelong learning, flexibility,
innovation, creativity etc.
 Communicating: The use of Cloud Computing in terms of learning and practicing
foreign languages helps students put emphasis on using them as a means for
communication with other people and not on grammatical or syntactical
correctness per se.
2.4 The Pedagogical System in Europe
The way education is perceived and is practiced nowadays in Europe does not
correspond to the present and future needs, the very nature, and the role of the
major stakeholders and generally to the future of education. Yet it should be clear
that education in the immediate future should move towards the new network
centered paradigm, which in essence forces Cloud Computing as the main
educational tool. An instrument which provides the present day Z generation
(students which have been born in the 21st century) not only the required
competences to face today’s and tomorrow’s world and common to all the students,
but in a uniformity free environment a fundamental requirement in the education of
the future.
The final question, which is related and to the issues posed in the beginning of this
section has to be: is the School on the Cloud just another education fad or the only
way to deal with the basic issues facing education? Considering it merely either as a

fad or the ultimate education truth, however, misses the deeper contribution of the
School on the Cloud as the true base upon which to develop, construct and apply the
new Network centered knowing paradigm in educating students in a holistic way for
the complex and challenging future.
3. TRENDS AND CHANGES
No one questions that society is rapidly entering a new era in which the economy, the
societal institutions and structures as well as education are changing at an
accelerating pace. This new era is going to change teaching and learning so
dramatically, that both the ways in which education prepares students and the
reasons for pursuing learning will be quite different than they are today. Many factors
will be contributing towards this future and they can be discerned from trends in
society, technology, schools with the use of Cloud Computing, innovations etc. These
trends we expect to substantiate the ability of the education community to use these
changes to adapt the whole system of education. That is, the basic dictum that
“Technology changes, Education survives” signifies not only the role of education
as a societal necessity, but mainly the need to understand and discerned trends and
changes, in order to explore their potential implications to education. The future of
education inevitably is affected by many trends, among which the most profound are
the following:
3.1 Trends in Society
From the previous discussion, it should be evident that although Cloud Computing is
not simply a novice technology that promises to deliver many exciting things. It is
already a reality and there are many educational implementations of it. Nevertheless
evaluating the maturity it has reached, its present and anticipated pace of growth as
well as its trends are not easily attainable objectives, but they are achievable as long
as there is a good grasp of them. That is, in order to fulfill the objective of evaluating
the future scenarios for Cloud Computing based education there is a need to
examine trends and developments and their implications as well as their limitations at
the interface of Cloud Computing and education. Following is such an examination of
the trends which are emerging from developments in society, in technology and in
education.
In terms of societal trends, the literature (Molebash, 2013; Facer and Sandford,
2010; Cliff et al. 2008; Goodings, 2009; Horst, 2009; Jewitt, 2009; Reich 2009; Riley,
2009; Young & Muller, 2009) shows that in our society the following long-term
developments have become particularly important in challenging our assumptions
about education and its future.
3.1.1 Towards Denser, Deeper and more Diverse Information Landscape:
Nowadays we "know more stuff about more stuff» because our ability to gather,
store, examine, archive and circulate more data, in more diverse forms, about more

aspects of ourselves and our world, is and will keep increasing more than ever
before. The reasons are many but simple and are related to social trends towards:
«accountability and security, the decreasing cost and increasing availability of digital
storage capacity, the development of new forms of genetic information, the ability to
digitally tag almost any physical object, space or person, the ability to represent
information in diverse modes» (Sultan, 2010).
3.1.2 Towards Constant Connectivity: The ability to be constantly connected to
knowledge, resources, people and tools is a reality for persons in countries with an
advanced technology and infrastructure. In the very near future it will be available to
all in every place. Individuals will have the capacity to remain in ‘perpetual contact’
with diverse networks, communities, institutions and persons, both physical and
virtual.
3.1.3. Towards personal cloud: As a collateral development of the previous trend
there is and will continue to be a rise in mobile and personal technologies and a
lowering of barriers to data storage. As a result, individuals increasingly are or soon
will be likely to ‘wrap’ their information landscape around themselves rather than
managing it through institutions.
3.1.4. Towards Working and Living Alongside Machines: As I was writing these
lines, I communicated with a computer on the other end of my telephone line who
fixed my Wi-Fi which had stopped working. Nowadays we have become increasingly
accustomed to machines taking on more roles previously occupied by humans,
across both professional and manual occupations as well as in homes and
workplaces. As a result, it becomes increasingly normal to accept the presence of
«machines» in our lives, but at the same time it raises significant ethical and practical
issues and generates public debate relating to questions of dependence and
autonomy, as well as of privacy and trust, particularly with regards to sensitive data
and critical systems. These dilemmas are of particular importance to education.
3.1.5 Towards a Multicultural Society and Schools: Demographic trends follow a
divergent path in the developed and the less developed countries, resulting at the
first level in mass population moves between them (legal and illegal immigration) and
on a second level the creation of a multicultural society which in turn results in
multicultural schools.
3.1.6 Towards a Knowledge Society and Economy?: Today's society operating at
the interface of demographic and technological changes has polarized experts into
believing that the future is either in the development of a ‘smart’ economy based on
knowledge and innovation or that knowledge economy is utopian. That is, on one
hand technological developments lead into a knowledge society and economy where

highly competitive R&D activities and knowledge work are the driving forces. On the
other hand, the same factors it is believed to enable centralized groups to manage
ever greater numbers of people across dispersed locations. These developments
may bring an end to current hopes of a universal, democratic ‘knowledge economy’
and a rise in massive inequalities.
3.1.7 Towards a Digital Native Society: Digital natives, those born after 1990, are
characterized as having access to networked digital technologies and the skills to
use them. Their lives (social interaction, friendships, civic and other activities) are
mediated by digital technologies and they have never known any other way of life.
However ‘digital natives’ will, like their parents before them, need to learn to use the
new technological advancements that keep coming. For example, in an age when
news often spreads virtually through social media, most experts feel it is critical that
young people learn how to analyze and evaluate the authenticity of the myriad of
messages they encounter every day. As a result, substantial changes in the
distribution of educational resources will be required to fulfill the educational needs of
this population cohort who will be required to learn the rest of their lives.
3.1.8 Towards the Dictum "Geography matters but not Distance": As
technological developments lead to a ‘sense of presence’ in remote interactions, and
as such interactions are developing between families, friends and co-workers, the
notion of being ‘together apart’ is becoming a familiar aspect of working, interacting
and entertaining ourselves. That is, the separation of ‘information resources’ from
physical locations will become widespread resulting in the diminution of the
importance of location. On the other hand, Geography will continue to influence the
access of individuals and groups to digital networks, for physical geography
determines their pricing, infrastructure, legal constraints and regulation. Moreover,
the «face to face» interaction will retain its importance because many, especially
educational and social aspects of our lives, are paramount for them.
3.2 Trends in Technology
Technological changes that have an impact on our lives have started some time ago,
but their important characteristic is that they will be continuing operating, developing
and increasing their influence in our society and in education in particular (Molebash,
2013). As a result, the suggestion of Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal
Reserve Board who said in 1997 that «One of the most central dynamic forces [in the
economy] is the accelerated expansion of computer and telecommunications
technologies...clearly our educational institutions will continue to play an important
role in preparing workers to meet these demands», still holds today. Among the most
important trends that will influence education in the immediate future are the
following:

3.2.1 Technology will Continue to have an Impact on Education: The rate of
technology change and growth has been exponential and is not likely to decrease.
Technology nowadays is widely used at all levels of education, influencing teaching
and learning methods and expectations. Technological innovations are changing the
very way that schools teach and students learn. For academic institutions, charged
with equipping graduates to compete in today’s knowledge economy, have to employ
among others online and distance learning, sophisticated learning-management
systems, multi-modal teaching, changing curricula and spawning rich forms of online
research and collaboration. As a result, technological innovations will continue to
have a major influence on teaching and learning methodologies in the near future. In
fact, technology will become a core factor in determining the nature, the form and the
structure of education.
3.2.2 Moore's Law will Continue to Operate: Gordon Moore, the cofounder of Intel
Corporation in 1965 suggested (half in jest) that technology doubles in processing
power approximately every 18 months and at the same time the price for that
technology declines by about 35% a year relative to this power. This trend of
increased power at lower cost, known as Moore's Law, has been operating since that
time and it is likely to continue in the immediate future.
3.2.3 Metcalfe's Law will Continue to Operate: The combination of better, faster
and cheaper computers and the increased bandwidth has caused a boon in the
network community. Based on this, Bob Metcalfe, inventor of the Ethernet, suggested
that the power of a network increases proportionally by the square of the number of
users, which is known as the Metcalfe's Law. That is, as the power of the computer
increases, so do the capabilities of communications and media, including glass
fibers, copper wires, and wireless communication systems. This trend which started
some time ago is expected to continue at least in the immediate future.
3.2.4 Technology Fusion will Continue to Operate: A few years ago there was a
sharp distinctions between computers, photos, publishing, TV/video, and
telecommunications. Now the distinctions between these media are blurring.
However, as Molebash (2013) has put it "Bringing them together results in the whole
having greater impact than each individual part...". Given that in education most of
these media are extensively utilized, this merger is considered as the most significant
trend in education and technology. As a result, technology fusion has and will
continue to have a significant impact on education.
3.2.5 Cloud Computing will Continue to be Integrated with Teacher Education:
The final challenge is related to teacher education and training. In most cases of
schools which are connected and equipped with technology, the teachers lack the
skills or formal education they need to empower students to pursue their own
interests and free class time for more experiential forms of learning. As a result, the

challenge is to provide teacher education and/or training as how to integrate digital
pedagogies in their teaching in order for their students to best learn with digital tools
and methods.
3.2.6 Technologies will Continue to be an Integral part of Education:
Technologies have changed the nature and the ways of education, because they
shape, change and enable new approaches in accessing, understanding and
creating knowledge. Therefore, it is crucial that the fundamental education
stakeholders: first obtain the necessary skills to find, process and manage
information and to confidently, efficiently and critically use technologies to achieve
their objectives and second continuously update these skills in order to support the
other stakeholders(i.e. teachers their students) for a safe and efficient use of the
relevant technologies available.
In addition, however, technologies have certain requirements that need to be
observed. It is important that education stakeholders learn to safely and responsibly
use them inside and outside the classroom and therefore more knowledge and
support is needed for effective pedagogical strategies for the use of ICT in schools.
3.3 Trends in Innovations
The benefits of innovations applied to the education system as recourses (i.e.
centralized and optimized, sharing, on demand, ability to evolve, etc.) will provide the
system with the ability to revise the way in which education institutions, students and
teachers are able to use equipment, applications and subjects' content. Following
science-fiction author William Gibson who once said, «the future is already
here» several initiatives have been taken in the last few years providing such
technological innovations to teaching and learning. Among them the most interesting,
based on Cloud Computing techniques and technologies, are the following (IBM,
2010):
3.3.1 Creating Intelligent Classrooms: Cloud Computing by providing the
recourses for a set of tools and applications will contribute in creating a classroom
with a quality and effectiveness of teaching that can be considered intelligent. Among
such tools and applications the following are the most interesting:
 Access to courses, syllabuses, documentation and information, regardless of the
location of the learner, which can be in the classroom, in the school’s yard, at
home, travelling, or in the library.
 Access of students (individually or in group) to the same learning subject content,
which allows for a much sought after collaboration between students.

 Access on an individual basis (personalized) to the learning resources which best
suit the individual student’s needs and learning difficulties. Providing of course
freedom of choice by the student (which includes guidance by the teacher).
 Access to the teaching recourses of one institution to students and teachers from
another (close or further away) so that they can share material, practices etc.
 Access to real time assessment results of tests, exams and homework, which are
centrally available. Such a tool, in addition of providing immediate identification of
each student’s needs and difficulties, more importantly it provides the means to
place current results in a personal or other contexts (i.e. to compared them with
fellow students, as well as with the student's, the teacher's and the school's
academic history).
3.3.2 Creating Virtual Classrooms: ICT in the form of Cloud Computing by
providing the necessary communication and collaboration tools can help bring down
the walls of the classroom and give rise to the virtual classroom, because it can
promote exchanges, group work and inter-school projects. More specifically it
enables:
 Students of the same age located in distant institutions, towns or countries to
share in the experience of any class being taught online.
 Teachers in a certain location to teach classes in a different school, town, country
or even continent, complete with the required material.
 Researchers can have instant access to research and discoveries from any a
parallel or linked center around the world.
That is, platforms and contents hosted in the Cloud enable: students to approach
topics in a wider context; teachers to create collaboration spaces or forums where
they can interact and invite colleagues to join in; and research activities or
discoveries to be approached simultaneously by scientists of any specialization and
from any part of the world.
3.3.3 Creating Virtual Labs: innovations such as Cloud Computing by offering the
resources for processing, calculating and simulating can contribute in creating virtual
labs. More specifically, students and teachers can carry out in a virtual form the
simulations or experiments they need or want in any subject (chemistry, physics,
geography, economics, and other sciences), and in any degree of difficulty (from the
simplest to the most complex).
3.3.4 Creating Virtual Contents: New technologies in the form of Digital IWB's
(interactive whiteboards), they can help create a virtual reference system of content
that remains in the public domain and thus avoid the pitfalls of using nothing but the
costly commercial content. But mainly such a system can provide teachers with the
choice of using a content as is, have alter it to meet their needs, adapt it to the local
conditions, or finally use it to supplement their own. The opportunity to share this
virtual content, together with the input from the local teachers will have a favorable
effect, both on the diversity and quality of the content, as well as on the ability of all

schools to access quality content that they have not had the resources to develop
themselves.
3.3.5 Creating eTwinning for teachers and students. eTwinning started very
recently as a teachers network in Europe, in contrast with: Facebook which is still a
US-centric website for university students; Twitter which is addressing a few hundred
special minded web fanatics and Google which is focused on making money as a
search engine. eTwinning started as an initiative of making teachers and indirectly
schools collaborate through the use of ICT, which indicates that in the future students
might need to also participate. So what Professor Derrick de Kerckhove, had said
that, “it’s all about connected intelligences”, might become a truly integrated school
educational network.
3.3.6 Creating Artificial Intelligence (AI): Artificial Intelligence is the capacity of
computer systems or software to imitate or simulate intelligent human behavior. As a
result Artificial Intelligence will be increasingly function as a utility to facilitate many
services and not as a general purpose application with which users will interact,
without losing its ability to be at the service of individuals, including all the
educational stakeholders.
3.3.7 Creating Augmented Reality: This newly promoted digital reality is an
enhanced view of reality created by integrating in real time computer-generated
sensory input, such as sounds, images, graphics, and video, on top of a user’s
physical surroundings. As it continues to develop augmented reality is expected in
the future to play an important role in education, because teaching and learning lies
at the interface between computer and students' generated material.
3.3.8 Creating Intelligent Administration: Cloud Computing provides effective tools
for management, assessing performance and managing resources, which allow
school administrators to perform three important functions:
 Analytical Monitoring of students’ progress and teaching programs, which in turn
makes it possible for courses to be adjusted more quickly, helping the student and
redistributing teaching resources to suit needs.
 Performance monitoring in the cloud, allows administrators to deal with data and
information in a centralized way and from multiple establishments, which allows
the important to management benchmarking. In this way school administrators can
re-energize teaching policies, as well as better inform, using a series of criteria,
students and their parents.
 Performance management or education lifecycle can be achieved using the
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) form of cloud service which enables administrators
to save data related to students, including information from several different
establishments and to process them centrally, in order for the data to be
accessible to everyone everywhere. This is important, in terms of consulting
outside office hours, for teachers who work in a many schools, when campuses
are located far apart and for teaching networks.

3.3.9 Creating Innovative Research Environment: Cloud Computing can provide
researchers the tools to gain access to abundant information that is increasingly
widespread and scattered all over the world. That is, in order for researchers to be
able to operate and be effective, they need to gain access to information and use it
properly, which can be made possible by centralizing the resources in the cloud.
More specifically, Cloud Computing provides the tools for the:
 Creation of Communities and Collaboration Schemes. This scheme between
researchers sharing common or complementary interests, can undoubted have a
stimulating effect on research efforts.
 Creation of Shared Calculation Infrastructures. This timeshare approach,
adapted to the concept of virtualization and the cloud, leads to a common pool of
resources accessible to every researcher who needs them.
 Creation of Centralized Research Data from a Variety of Sources. This
approach enables the results to be used faster, leading to a speedier progress
from the moment the data are processed by analysis and software application.
3.3.10 Creating New Teaching and Learning Tools.
In recent years, with the rapid development of emerging technologies, the integration
of Information and Communication Technology has increasingly attracted the
attention of education stakeholders, in the form of teaching and learning tools.
Educators are turning their attention to various technological tools that can be used
as learning objectives or contexts, to develop new learning environments, to modify
existing resources, to engage with specific groups of learners or decide alternative
strategies for teaching and learning. Some of these tools are:
 Virtual Reality (VR) Teaching and Learning Tools: VR is shaping up to be one
of the most important technological innovations in shaping teaching and learning,
for it represents an educational tool on how the technology could change how
students learn and are taught. That is, it is the technology which allows students to
test educational experiences that could alter the trajectory of their studies and their
lives as well as teach complex problems in a different way than traditional
education methods of today. As a result it is expected that there the demand to
bring VR into the classroom, so that students would be allowed to learn
experientially will increase steadily.
 3D Printers as Teaching and Learning Tools: 3D printers represent, among
other achievements, a complete educational paradigm shift. Indeed, as students
print and then print again and keep on printing, because of their adventuring
nature they reach a point in time when they realize, ‘It is of no value to me
something that already exists (a copy), I want something that doesn’t yet exist'. As
a result, and in response to discovering needs, it is of no surprise that 3D printers
have taken a place in education, by helping students bring their ideas to life and
most importantly put their hands on concepts that previously experienced only in
textbooks. 3D printing is already being used effectively in schools fostering the
ability of students to create an object to solve a problem (especially in developing

countries). Making 3D printed objects with a purpose will increase tremendously in
the future. It is expected that this technology will increase its education use as
these devices become affordable and the barriers in adapting them continue to
drop.
 Devices to Connect to the internet (The Internet of Things Concept): In the
modern mobile world, the attention of education stakeholder by necessity shift
their focus on the students who are surrounded by a large network of mobile
devices and on the constant increase in the number of connected technologies
students use daily. Technology is rapidly unlocking new uses for connectivity,
changing not only how our students are networked, but also how The Internet of
Things Concept will become part of the education system.
The Internet of Things Concept applications for education are still at an initial
stage, although a limited number of schools and universities are a tapping into this
technology to create environments that students might not be able to experience
otherwise. But the most important is its potential, because this technology looms
across a variety of applications with an ever increasing speed as part of education
for consumers and in part based on their permanent necessity of being connected.
 Wearables as Teaching and Learning Tools: It has been said that the art of
being able to learn anywhere, at any time, should also include any ‘how’. That gap
in learning can be filled by wearable devices which give students more
opportunities to be connected learners. That is, wearable technology has been
pushing the boundaries of what students are able to create anywhere, anytime
and on any subject. In addition, wearable’s can also provide many benefits to
educators, because they offer more options in their effort to monitor and engage
with their students during their teaching, as well as communicate with other
educators, giving them more options for collaboration.
 Machine-Learning Techniques: The devises which are based on machine-
learning techniques can perform many tasks that are rapidly becoming more
sophisticated and are improving towards becoming true thinking machines. In
terms of education they could change the traditional role of technology in
education, because the robotics can serve in an actual hands-on role in the
classroom. Today these robotic toys have mainly an important impact on changing
how special-education students learn in the classroom. In the future, most experts
agree that such robotic toys will increasingly serve as counselors and playmates to
children with various learning disabilities like Autism. As Patterson in an EdTech
blog (2016) has written “There are hundreds of other great ways to use these
robots to support student learning. My advice is get one and put it into the hands
of students — see what they can do. Build challenges and celebrate failure.
Learning can be hard but fun and these robots make integration easy”.
 Co-presence Technologies: These technologies utilize audio and video
instruments to create a feeling to education stakeholders of being together across
distance. Examples include an in-room hologram of a teacher who is in another

classroom or school location and a robot with audio and video displays and
sensors that can move around in one classroom while being controlled by a
student in another classroom or school.
3.4. Trends in Education.
As it was mentioned previously there have been significant advances in Information
and Communications Technology (ICT) in the form of cloud computing that continue
unabated up to now. As a result, there is an increasingly perceived vision that cloud
based education (designed and provided in the form of optional, tailored services,
with operators and teaching establishments pooling their resources) will soon be the
single most important path towards future education. In other words, it is suggested
that the education because of the use of cloud computing in the immediate future will
be affected by the impact of several influential trends as follows:
3.4.1 Education Needs to Change to Respond to Economy and Society:
Learning objectives need to change to take into account future competence needs,
which are determined by societal conditions in general and economic demands in
particular. As a result, a major challenge for the education system in the future is to
cater to the needs and requirements that are imposed upon education by the
economy and society.
3.4.2 Education Needs to Change towards Knowledge: A fundamental challenge
for the future in education will be for students to learn how to safely and responsibly
use technologies in school as well as in their lives. However, in order for that need to
be met more knowledge is needed for effective pedagogical strategies in the use of
Cloud Computing in schools. In other words Cloud Computing has to provide
improved or new ways to increase access to various forms of information and
connections between people or more and better knowledge.
3.4.3 Education Should be Focused on Competences Rather Than Memorizing
Knowledge: EU has accepted a set of key future competences as well as set of
future skills for problem solving, collaboration, negotiation, innovation and self-
management. In addition European teachers have in many instances confirmed the
importance of these key competences and skills as future educational objectives,
Moreover, other educational stakeholders identified that developing one’s personality
and managing one’s place in a changing world and society, together with awareness
of the environmental challenges they represent the crucial future educational
objectives necessary for developing one’s competences over the course of a lifetime.
3.4.4 Education Needs to Change to Become Authentic: Authentic learning is also
an important challenge for the future in education and is concerned with bringing real
life experiences into the classroom. That is, authentic learning has to become a
necessary pedagogical strategy establishing or upgrading a fundamental concept,
namely: help students to engage in seeking some connection between the world as

they know it exists outside the school and their experiences in school. Cloud
Computing can provide the tools to create learning scenarios incorporating real life
experiences familiar to students, that can bring authentic learning into the classroom
and prepare them for the real world. The upmost challenge of such practices of
course is to "help retain students in school and prepare them for further education,
careers, and citizenship in a way that traditional practices are too often failing to do»
(E.U. Horizon Report, 2014).
3.4.5 Education Should be Compatible with Identity Factors: Encouraging
individual institutions to develop their own teaching and learning practices or
curriculum structures is important because is the only way for them to be in par with
the rest institution in educational attainment and performance. Therefore, educational
approaches should be tailored to the identity needs, learning styles and preferences
of each institution and thus facilitate the common educational expectations. As a
result, support for institutional development, educational practices, learning
objectives and assessment procedures should be revised and should not be uniform
or standardized. Various ways and sources of learning should be provided and
supported so that students in each institution can create a learning journey based on
local factors. That is, educational institutions should take responsibility not for the
common learning goals, but for the ways to achieve them.
3.4.6 Education Should be More Active and Connected to Real Life. It is
universally accepted that the younger generation should learn to grow up as part of
the society and be aware of what takes place around them. This is the only way to
become responsible and independent global citizens, which is the essence of
education. As a result, education in the future should become more active and
constructive, with an emphasis on authentic learning as well as learning by doing.
Because when education focuses on the social interaction of students with other
learners, teachers and third parties they will be connected to real life, nature, work,
and life in the local and global community.
3.5 Provisions of Cloud Computing
Although Cloud Computing is part of the technology due to its importance to
education it is treated in this report separately. Experience and the literature (IBM
2013; Gaytos, 2012; Sultan, 2010) shows that there is a range of resources and
services available to education via Cloud Computing, whether they concern
infrastructure, services, solutions or the introduction of new processes. That is, Cloud
Computing will become the fundamental instrument in a Cloud based educational
environment by bringing many benefits to education of which the following are
considered the most commonly referred and important (Koutsopoulos, 2015b).

3.5.1 Savings: The Cloud will result in general and in education in particular in a cost
effective use of ITC resources, by reducing the cost through the:
 Sharing of IT Equipment which are centralized in the cloud and thus deliver
economies of scale and eliminate the need for costly local infrastructures.
 Sharing the Provision of software licenses, management skills, physical security
for servers usually are under- or over-sized and not used to their maximum
potential.
 Reduction in the Size and Complexity of the number of machines and programs
installed and utilized at each site, for the cost of licenses and maintenance is less.
 Decrease in the Number of Applications that are installed and run in the
computers at each site, for the Cloud provides access to an unlimited number of
users.
 Cost of Services this is based on the actual use of resources (pay-per-use
billing).
 Savings in Human Resources for the technical staff required to manage in-
house machines is minimum.
 Freeing up the Capex budget, for the Cloud involves the operational expenditure
model (Opex).
3.5.2 Flexibility: One of the main benefits of Cloud-based teaching and learning is
that it will prevent individual investments in equipment, programs etc. The reason is
that the centralized infrastructures of cloud computing promotes flexibility in various
ways, including the following as they were reported by IBM:
 Speed of Adjusting to Change: Centralizing and standardizing the available
resources enables faster upgrades in line with technological progress and/or
changes to demand and requirements.
 Smooth Adjustment to ICT Resources: With cloud Computing due to the
flexibility of the infrastructure and the ease of accessing resources based on
needs (since, with cloud-based ICT, a new version of the application or any
application software can be more easily distributed to users (e.g., servers, storage
space, calculating power, application authorities, content) and made available to
them.
 Flexibility in Implementing Teaching Content: With Cloud Computing students
are able to draw from the whole of the content available, as well as find the
information and tools they are looking for that are appropriate to their stage of
education. This is particular useful for personalized learning, a customized
teaching process that meets the needs and specific difficulties of each student (or
each profile of student).
 Flexibility in terms of the Number of Machines Needed: Cloud architecture can
potentially support every type of client hardware and application (albeit with a
number of exceptions, depending on the service-provider).
 Self-service Potential: Particular useful for students, teachers and education
establishments; and
 Flexibility of Learning: Cloud Computing is providing easy access to courses and
content at any time, any place; options to learn outside the school itself, as well as

outside of the school calendar (holidays, ongoing learning after-
school/postgraduate training) (IBM, 2010).
3.5.3 Effectiveness: Cloud Computing by promoting a dynamic exchange and
participation between teachers, pupils and students, their social network and parents,
leads first into finding the appropriate to the stage of education information and tools.
But more importantly it leads into an effective learning and teaching process. That is,
Cloud Computing provides a more productive students' learning because it helps
them among others, towards the rise in their level of understanding and achievement,
increasing chance of success, gaining a clearer view of the realities of their future
working life, etc. In terms of teachers and administrators Cloud Computing provides
them with the tools to pool and implement effective management practices.
3.5.4 Sharing: Cloud Computing provides the means in every institution to avoid the
duplication of resources that exist elsewhere. That is, skills, good practices,
applications, teaching content and infrastructures can be pooled and shared.
Moreover, the sharing of equipment leads into harmonizing and making it easier to
support resources, as well as avoiding the problems of incompatibility or the difficulty
of integration between various tools and systems. Finally sharing teaching material
and subject content avoids educational inequalities and the present day issue of
“poorly performing” or “second-rate” schools and thus promises fairer access to
educational and learning resources. Overall, Cloud Computing sharing capabilities
can provide a major input into:
 Bridging the digital divide.
 Promoting a new way of making education more accessible.
 Ultimately reducing digital social inequalities.
3.5.5 Real time Access: Cloud Computing can allow students and teachers to
access in real time useful and free information from anywhere in the world in a matter
of seconds. In education, this holds a special importance for it provides teachers and
students a fundamental tool in the learning process, that of constantly updating their
stock of information.
3.5.6 Reduces the Risk of Obsolescence: For all practical purposes Cloud
Computing can provide an “anti-obsolescence” insurance against technological
changes, because it can cope better and more efficiently with their increasingly rapid
development. In addition it can ensure the constant upgrading of all documents for it
can be done in a centralized and systematic way, at a single central point.
3.5.7 Reduces Users' Carbon Footprint: Cloud Computing benefits are not, as
most computer experts think, only related to how many its users can save as well as
provide them with the other educational advantages mentioned previously. Users of
cloud computing are more likely to significantly reduce users' carbon footprint. In an
era (the year 2015 was the warmest year since temperature records are kept) where
the need for educational establishments to become more sustainable, there is an
increasing value in improving the institutions’ carbon footprint and energy costs. As a
result, virtualized services such as those offered by Cloud Computing should be

considered an important contribution towards that goal and an added benefit of that
educational approach.
3.5.8 Default Web Server: Cloud Computing as it was mentioned can provide a
solution to the limitations of shared hosting and the high expense of dedicated
servers. In this way, hardware is virtualized and managed by a hypervisor that is able
to administer servers as well as create partitions of CPU, memory, storage and
network. Since each education stakeholder gets their own virtual server, it appears to
them as if they have a dedicated server. As a result, the use of cloud computing can
be considered as default web server.
3.6 Trends in Schools
School attendance has becοme obligatory and in a specific knowledge transmission
way, for the last century in all Western societies (Murtin & Viarengo, 2008). However,
recent developments in education, in the form of Cloud Computing, suggest that as
learning can take place where and when we need them and in any way we desire,
the role of schools has changed and still is evolving. Changes in the teaching and
learning approaches, the learning materials and the information conceptualization
have been creating a new school, which should be providing:
3.6.1 21st
Century Competences: The literature indicates that the future of teaching
and learning will be towards new competences. As a result some people will need to
update their skills and some others to re-skill. In other words, the future school will
need to foster skills that are «generic, transversal and cross-cutting» (Redecker et
al., 2011), in order for learners to actively engage in lifelong learning.
3.6.2 Deinstitutionalization: A very important trend in the operation of school is the
shift from formal to informal education. With the coming of ICT technologies, in the
form of Cloud Computing, learning cannot be exclusively confined to the classroom.
That is, teaching and learning is becoming an educational activity which: first it is not
bound to any specific educational institution or to any location within them and
second it is not dedicated to predetermined periods in life. The reasons are simple:
Schools have to be responding to future labor market requirements, and thus to be
flexible and responding to individual learners’ needs. In other words, teaching and
learning inevitably will span the period from pre-school to post-retirement time and
will increasingly take place at home, at the workplace and at other institutions
(OECD, 2001). As a result, the new school will actually bring what it can be termed
the deinstitutionalization of the school, associated with informal education.
3.6.3 Technological Innovation and Use of New Technologies: The most
important shift in our schools is the increasing development of new technologies and
their appropriation in teaching and learning. As Mutka et al., 2010 have wrote, "it is
difficult to imagine the future of learning environments without ICT (and we might add

in the form of cloud computing) at the forefront or in the background". Indeed,
portable applications such as tablets and mobile phones as well as new
communication applications such as collaborative and social networking sites are or
very soon will become standard tools across all schools. The reasons are that
technological applications: facilitate access with amplified diversity of resources; they
allow users to connect through online content: they have become models of
collaboration; and provide complex digital competences juxtaposed with new
communication skills. Because of these reasons, in the new school attainment of
digital competence to use such technologies in a desirable and targeted priority is of
paramount importance.
3.7 Trends in Learning
The use of Cloud Computing in the classroom will have in the immediate future an
impact on the fundamental elements of classroom education (the subjects taught and
the learning methods in attaining them), as well the changing role of several
influential factors as follows:
3.7.1 The Fundamental Subjects need to Increase: In terms of the teaching
subjects it is suggested that Cloud Computing will become the 4th fundamental
subject that students should master (after reading, writing and arithmetic). That is,
education will be transformed into a process consisting of providing an additional
subject that is commoditized and delivered along with the traditional subjects of
reading, writing and arithmetic. In other words, in this educational process students,
in addition to learning how to read, write and do arithmetic calculations, they need to
be efficient in using the Cloud to access all forms of educational material, based on
their requirements without regard to where these are coming from or how they are
delivered. In other words, the new (computing) subject, together with the other three
fundamental ones, will provide a new teaching and learning approach which is
essential to meet the basic needs of the 21st century student.
Therefore, what is suggested is: first, despite the advancement of modern education
approaches the basic subjects will continue to be provided to all students, because
they provide them with the necessary dexterities that later on in their lives will allow
them to accomplish the necessary daily life tasks. Second and most important in the
basic school subjects Cloud Computing should be included. That is, ICT in the form
of Cloud Computing should be taught to students together with the other three
fundamental subjects. Thus, this vision of the foursome set of fundamental subjects
will transform the entire education structure in the 21st century into a different form of
education.
3.7.2 Social and Emotional Learning (SEL): The World Economic Forum has
moved a step further from the previous suggestion. More specifically, it proposed that
because the future economy will transform the workplace simply by been digital,
there is a need for the traditional academic learning to be supplemented not only with

ICT skills, but with Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). In other words, students
must learn to be adept at collaboration, communication and problem-solving, which
are some of the skills developed through social and emotional learning and are
necessary for the 21st labor market.
3.7.3 Students Need to Change to Complex Thinking and Communication: This
is also another challenge related to students. The web, big data, modeling
technologies and a series of other innovations make possible to train students in
complex and systematic thinking, which in turn have an impact on communication
skills. The challenge for the future is for students to be able to master modes of
complex thinking and the capacity to connect people with other people, using Cloud
technologies. In other words, this challenge requires an ability to understand the
bigger picture and to make appeals that are based on logic, knowledge and data.
3.7.4 Changing in the Learning Process: Policy makers, researchers and plain
everyday experience indicate that with the advent of the 21st century a fundamental
transformation of education is needed to address the new dexterities and
competences required. Indeed several studies (i.e. European Commission/ Horizon
Report Europe: 2014 Schools Edition, European Commission/Ala-Machida et. al.,
2010 and Beyond Current Horizons Programme/Facer and Sanford, 2010/ World
Economic Forum, 2016) have shown that future developments, related to required
skills and competences, will change schools over the next 20 years. Among these
changes the most important are:
 Learning will Focus on Four Object Competences: In the future, in order to
focus on knowledge the most important basic future skills will be analytical and
critical dexterities, problem solving, collaboration, negotiation, innovation and self-
management, which, however require Languages (good handling of reading and
writing), Mathematics (ability to calculate) and the help of Cloud Computing. That
is, the four fundamental subjects approach is considered crucial for developing
one’s competences over the course of a lifetime.
 Learning will be Tailored to the Needs of Individuals or Personalized
Learning: In the future, in order to encourage individual learners to develop their
own talents and interests, the educational approaches should be tailored to their
individual needs, learning styles and preferences. But, such a goal can only be
achieved only using Cloud Computing which can provide the students with the
necessary skills and competences for a personalized learning, which in turn allow
the rigid walls of the classroom to be transform into the random, moving shape of
the internet. It should be noted that truly personalized learning will continue to
increase its utilization, despite the efforts of many vendors who force products on
us that aren’t really personalized.
 Learning will be Based on a New Vision: A broader concept than the previous
one was introduced by Redecker et. al. (2011), who have suggested that a three
axis vision of personalization, collaboration and "informalization» (informal
learning) should and will be at the core of teaching and learning in the future. That
is, these three principles for organizing learning and teaching will be the guiding
force in the school of future, which will be characterized by lifelong and life-wide

learning and shaped by the ubiquity of Information and Communication
Technologies in the form of Cloud Computing.
 Learning will shift: A process that started a few years back, continues now, but it
will take a new integrated form in the immediate future will continue to find ways to
shift from teacher-directed, transmission-oriented, passive classrooms to
environments in which student voice and agency are both honored and enabled.
Thus creating more engaged, student-directed learning opportunities.
 Learning will be Active and Connected to Real Life: In the future, in order for
the younger generation to learn to grow up as part of society and be aware of what
takes place around them, learning is required to be active and constructive and
take place in social interaction with other learners, teachers and third parties. In
this way, student's learning will be connected to real life, to nature and to the local
and global community.
 Learning will be Towards Open, Flexible and Networked Relationships: In the
future, to limit barriers to students in order to participate across institutions,
cultures and educational settings, it requires: the development of compatible
personal learning records owned and managed by the students themselves;
interoperable systems and standards that will enable students to demonstrate
attainment and experience across diverse settings; the arrangements and tools
that will enable students to take advantage of learning opportunities across
different providers; and the means to support students and teachers to navigate
the future complex environment effectively. Of course none other than Cloud
Computing can provide students and teachers the ability to accomplish each one
of those as well as their combination.
 Learning will be Meaningful and Authentic: In the future, learning will be based
on access and participation to the world’s global information commons and
learning communities. That is, students can find additional ways to use digital
learning tools to do meaningful, authentic work instead of traditional, artificial,
"decontextualized» classroom assignments. As a result, educational institutions
will be forced to recognize the power of students by that access and participation.
 Online Learning will Continue to Gain Acceptance: Online learning has been
part of the university education for a long time and its use is increasing unabated.
However, this trend is now extending to the lower levels of education which are
rapidly adapting to the new technologies. In essence, online learning has enjoyed
a renaissance over the last few years and has sparked an explosion of
development, new ideas, and experimentation. Online pedagogical models are
proliferating all over the world and in all levels of education. For example, in
Europe, the European Commission’s “Opening Up Education» has put into place
several initiatives to stimulate their development. The major reason online learning
is expected to transform teaching and learning are:
o It is less expensive to deliver than classroom-based education because it
does not require physical plant.
o It is accessible to learners anytime and anywhere.
o It appeals to the Net Generation’s unique needs and expectations in many
ways.

Cloud-based Education: Scenarios for the Future

Cloud-based Education: Scenarios for the Future

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