Giving Compass' Take:

• Here are five significant ways that modern technology, specifically cloud services, are revolutionizing education.  

• How can donors support more technology for the education system? What are some of the caveats of having too much tech in schools? 

• Read about the top trends in education technology.

Over the last decade, we’ve seen educational institutions—from K-12 schools to colleges and universities—make tremendous strides in seizing the opportunities that modern technologies provide.

In fact, 96 percent of leading research institutions are already using Amazon Web Services (AWS), as are 19 of the top 20 best-funded education technology startups. And as more schools continue to migrate workloads to the cloud, the benefits to students everywhere will multiply.

Here are the top five ways that the cloud is changing education today; many of them may surprise you.

  1.  Driving student success in the classroom and beyond The cloud can serve as a force multiplier in achieving this goal, putting additional tools to enhance student learning directly into the hands of educators. Indeed, hundreds of millions of students, educators, and researchers in more than 200 countries and territories have access to education technologies and online curricula running on AWS.
  2. Keeping student data safe AWS’s security offerings include auditing, log in identity management and data encryption capabilities that offer more transparency and control to allow schools to rigorously protect student data.
  3. Making technology dollars stretch further Not only is the cloud the right solution to improve student outcomes and data security, but it also supports fiscal responsibility.
  4. Saving educators’ time Cloud technology is also saving another invaluable resource—teachers’ time. By creating access to new lesson planning resources, better identifying which interventions are working best and even grading papers, the cloud is making it possible to save precious hours every week.
  5. Leveling the playing field Technology is omnipresent in many schools, but leveraging tech to develop more equitable and personalized learning experience for students is not easy.

Read the full article about cloud computing and education by Andrew Ko at EdSurge.