Cloud Computing - some enlightenment

Hmmm... what I thought would be a small white fluffy solitary thing in the sky is turning out to be a complex, brooding all covering cumulo-nimbus!! Cloud computing covers such a range of services (software, platform, infrastructure) and so, for the context of the first assignment, I'll probably focus on SaaS as it's pertinent to my own professional context seeing as our school has just moved over to Google for Educators to host our mail and provide all staff with access to Apps. After reading the Brown (2000) article I did a bit more delving and trawled on to his website. There's an excellent youtube video of a speech he made recently at Indiana University (cited below). A lot of it repeats what he covered in the earlier article but he does clarify some of his ideas with excellent examples (his reference to architecture studio androgogy and the "lurking" which occurs there is particularly helpful). What's all this got to do with Cloud and SaaS I hear you cry... well I feel that a lot of what Brown envisages with regard to "communities of practice" can be played out using software like Google Apps which allows collaboration and participation across borders be they geographical, social or cultural. It all seems to lead towards connectivism (or does connectivism lead to Open Source and cloud? Chicken and egg?) which I'm not yet familiar with - but I need to be wary of jumping onto the bandwagon of a new learning theory, just because it's new. Incidentally, the Brown website also has some pretty scary (to me) working papers on Cloud Computing which others pursuing this area may find useful - I'm afraid there are too many technical acronyms for me to cope with - and I am happy but a little jealous to admit that Brown out-geeks me by far :-) Brown, J. S. (2000). Growing up digital: How the web changes work, education and the ways people learn. Change(March/April), 11-20.

Brown, J.S. (2009) Learning in the Digital Age - speech at Indiana University