IBM announced in early November a global forum for educators, researchers and IT personnel from the education industry. The new IBM Cloud Academy will help these professionals to pursue cloud computing initiatives, develop skills and share best practices. These efforts will help them to reduce operating costs while improving quality and access to education.
This announcement represents a continuation of the cloud computing projects that IBM had initiated over the past two years. According to IBM’s officials, 17 educational institutions worldwide had already signed up to participate in the academy.
According to Michael King, vice president, IBM global education industry, this initiative will allow those in the education industry to easily gain immediate access to a variety of new educational resources and research applications and tools. King said this academy will advance awareness and adoption of cloud computing, including best practices for education and research institutions.
New technologies and research methods
Institutions and other participants of the Cloud Academy will be able to collaborate through an IBM-managed cloud. Available via the Internet, this cloud simplifies entry for the development and contribution of subject matter expertise.
Members can easily create working groups on areas of interest to the education industry. Other benefits include the provision of authorised users with the ability to collaborate on new innovations for clouds in education-related areas with IBM developers and to work on technical projects across institutions. In addition, members can also share research findings as well as exchange new ideas for research.
The IBM Cloud Academy is expected to also facilitate innovation of further advanced cloud computing. All the members will be encouraged to prepare education-focused open source software for clouds. IBM executives have suggested that members can do so by various means including integrating cloud provisioning and de-provisioning services, validating content for compliance with accessibility standard, and utilising IBM cloud offerings for teaching, learning, research and administration.
This initiative will also result in the creation of new technologies and research methods. By working with elite researchers in IBM labs throughout the world, the participants will be able to extend the boundaries of cloud computing in education.
General membership available in a few months
IBM will collaborate with participants on integrating cloud technologies into their campus and district infrastructures. IBM’s Academy of Technology will support this new academy through the company’s top technical leaders working in research, hardware and software development, manufacturing and services.
Participants of the academy will also have access to the company’s public cloud services. Currently, the charter members are working to define the final structure of the academy. The academy is scheduled to open for general membership in early 2010.
The international institutions participating in the academy include: Nanyang Technological University in Singapore; Beijing University of Technology in China; Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q), Qatar University (QU) and Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ) in Qatar; Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon in France; Ozyegin University in Turkey; and Victoria University in Australia.
US-based institutions include George Mason University; Georgia State University; Gwinnett County Public Schools; Marist College; New York University; North Carolina State University; Pike County Schools; The Executive Leadership Foundation’s Technology Transfer Project (a collaborative effort for Historically Black Colleges and Universities); and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
