• 5 Ways Students Can Use Cloud Computing to Amp Up Their Learning
• the capabilities of the cloud ensure that your students can use technology to get the information and access they need, no matter where they are or what time they are working.

• Google+ Hangouts for Group Meetings

   

  It can be a real challenge to get a group of students together to plan for a collaborative project, especially if they don’t all live on campus or if some of them work. Rather than making a time to meet at a central location, students can set a time that they can all agree to be in an Internet-capable place and communicate on a Google Plus Hangout.  They can even record the sessions to refer back to later — who doesn’t need a little help remembering exactly what they agreed to do?

• Evernote for Anytime Access to Class and Study Notes

   

  Evernote is a time-tested and beloved tool for educators and students alike. Why? Because it is easy to use and available on any device you want to use. As mobile devices have proliferated, Evernote has released native apps that allow users to take notes and share them no matter which device they are using at the time.

   

  Using handwriting recognition apps on their tablets, students can enter notes in a method that feels familiar but takes advantage of the best features of the technology — and possibly save a few trees in the process.

• LinkedIn to Connect with Experts

   

  When a research project requires input from real-world experts, LinkedIn can be an amazing tool to help students find leaders in their field of study.

• Google Drive, SkyDrive, or DropBox for Anywhere Access to Papers

   

  The proliferation in free cloud services is a boon to students who may not want to carry around a flash drive or other storage medium as they work on multiple devices. Each of these services offers at least 5 GB of free document storage, with the option of upgrading if students need more storage space.

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• Dropbox: A Superb Classroom Tool
• When I mention Dropbox to friends and colleagues, I usually get one of two responses – a knowing smile and nod, or a puzzled and quizzical look. Whether you know what the program is, you have likely heard the name. But really, what is Dropbox?
• Dropbox is many things — a multifaceted tool that’s so powerful, you’ll continue to discover new ways to use it. But the short and sweet of it is this: you can use it to store and sync documents and files across computers, tablets, and smart phones.

• How Dropbox works

   

  So, how can you use Dropbox as an educator? There are many ways that you can do this. One is to just manage your own material and make it more readily accessible. My PowerPoint presentations are very image intensive and quickly get over 20MB – not an emailable size (my server limits email space to 5MB). Rushing around in the morning, it’s easy to forgot to copy the new version of a big file onto my flash-drive. By keeping my lectures and other school materials on Dropbox, I always have access to the most recent changes.

• Using Dropbox with students

   

  In addition to making your life a lot easier, Dropbox can be a great teaching/learning tool – and this is why I introduce it to my students. The first thing to do is to create a sharing folder for each class you teach so you can make information available to your students (PowerPoints, hand-outs, reading assignments, whatever).

• How do I employ Dropbox in my classroom?

   

  I use Dropbox in a number of ways. Here are several:

   
   
  • To store additional copies of hand-outs. Students know to re-download and print on their own here if they missed a hand-out due to an absence or simply lost it (no one ever asks me for another copy).
   
  • To distribute PowerPoint presentations – most are too large for email.
   
  • As a way for students to turn in homework assignments. It’s an easy electronic homework drop (compared to email) and will time stamp submissions.

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• Evernote

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  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Evernote is a suite of software and services designed for notetaking and archiving. A "note" can be a piece of formatted text, a full webpage or webpage excerpt, a photograph, a voice memo, or a handwritten "ink" note. Notes can also have file attachments. Notes can be sorted into folders, then tagged, annotated, edited, given comments, searched and exported as part of a notebook.
• Evernote is available in a paid version or a more restricted, advertising-supported, free version. Use of the online service is free up to a certain monthly usage limit, with additional monthly use reserved for paying subscribers.

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• Why students can use cloud computing
• Students; a population on the move, travelling back and forth from their home to university, highschool… They fluently speak the language of presentations, working in group and being organized. But how do they organize their documents? How do they work in group and share documents?
• Instead of synchronizing their documents in the cloud, they send them to their e-mailaddress. That’s understandable. It is an easy and cheap way to get your files synchronized. But do you really want to let others have a look at your personal e-mailfolder when you’re waiting for your presentation to download while the beamer is on?
• Another common practice: you need to work in group and share documents.

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