Cloud Computing has done a lot for many different industries over the years. One industry which hasn’t engaged with this technology much over the years, but which is beginning to be transformed by it, is the Education sector. In the last 2 years especially – due to the COVID-19 pandemic – educational institutes have been forced to turn to new ways of education, namely digital and remote education. Cloud computing can make digital education much easier, and even more powerful in a lot of ways.

We spoke to a professional IT support company with experience working with educators, and they told us a bit about how the cloud supports education:

• Digital Resources

When it comes to digital education, there is really a lot more than can be done. Firstly, you can have all of the relevant textbooks in digital form, but it doesn’t stop there. You can create educational videos, or even record lessons and lectures. We spoke to one IT support company London businesses have been receiving training from for years; they record their own training videos which they host in the cloud – this means they can give all their customers access to the training videos (via an online portal).

• Always up-to-date materials

Another great thing about cloud-based learning resources is that they are much easier to keep up to date. Some institutions may rely on hardcopy learning materials – such as textbooks, or printouts – but the downside to this is that it takes longer for these materials to be replaced to new versions. On the other hand, when learning materials are stored as digital file formats, and those files are all stored centrally in the cloud, they can be replaced all at once and be immediately accessible to students.

• Increase reach

The great thing about cloud-based resources of any kind is that they can be accessed from anywhere, at any time. In the context of training and education, this means that students can be given access to resources remotely, and therefore the institution can have much more reach that if all education took place on-premises. This can have a lot of benefits for areas where there aren’t any schools nearby – as long as the student has an internet connection, they can access education.

• Backup & storage

Backing up data and storing it with the Cloud couldn’t be any easier, and it provides a greater level of assurance that data will not be lost. This is incredibly useful for education, because students and teachers alike will have important files and documents (and other types of content) that needs to be stored securely. This will help avoid situations where homework or project work is lost because of human error.

• Less hardware & software needed

The other great thing about the Cloud is that the school or training institution doesn’t need to invest in any kind of hardware or software to enable digital learning. There are lots of well-established cloud providers (such as Microsoft, for example) who have all the underlying infrastructure to provide cloud services for education. This will, in turn, make IT support for education much easier. So, if anyone was thinking that adopting the cloud for education would be an expensive or complicated process, the opposite is true – it might even help save money and streamline processes. 

• Cloud Solutions

Using the Cloud opens up all kinds of great cloud-based solutions that can be useful for educators. We have already touched upon how cloud hosting and can allows institutions to provide a wider variety of learning materials (such as tutorial videos and lectures). If your business choose to use Microsoft products, then you will be able to use many of the Office 365 Solutions on a cloud-based network.

Virtual desktops is another great example – institutions can provide standardised desktop experiences, from the cloud, which can be streamed to any computer with internet connection; this means that students can use their own laptops or PCs to access a secure, school desktop.