The vast majority of these tools are free, and when you have the chances to offload your storage and get access to some seriously cool computing tricks, it becomes very compelling to schools with increasingly tight budgets... But are you actually in charge?
There have been a number of music services online which shut down when they went bust or failed to make money for their owners. Annoyingly for people who bought music through them, some lost the lot and then found out in the terms and conditions that they had merely been renting the music and there was no legal imperative for the service to be available forever. Others have used online tools to edit photos, then found the website closed, bit of a problem when all their schemes of work use it. Even worse, students saved work would also disappear.
Even more interesting is where your data is stored. Increasingly companies use secure data centres, either huge air conditioned buildings with rack upon rack of servers, or natural caves tricked out like a James Bond set. They may even not be in this country, possibly not even on the same continent. Where the data is unlikely to be, in the event of a power / data cut at your school, is somewhere in your building!
Cloud computing and storage is an inevitability, but maybe we need to look beyond the headline claims by companies offering us this cool option and consider where and how our data is stored. Schools who would not allow a laptop home with sensitive student data on it seem fine with having that data 'anonymously' located somewhere they have no physical access
Remember - A USB stick in the hand is worth far more, during a crisis, than a thousand in a climate controlled data centre a thousand miles away!
And before you think that is the only thing to worry about, read this!
for 12 hours, 90% of users in an entire country had no internet access because a pensioner stole the cable. Keep your friends close, and your data closer still... or at least the copies!
