1. Peter in the cloud of education Cloud computing in education at FINKI Katerina Zdravkova University Sts Cyril and Methodius Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering katerina.zdravkova@finki.ukim.mk

2. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Contents Introduction Milestones of cloud computing Cloud computing in education and in research Peter’s fascination FINKI’s clouds Systems integration Conclusion

3. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Who is Peter? Young and ambitious student attracted by ICTs Successful competitor at international informatics competitions He is aware that: In the new hi-tech era it is more than ever inevitable to learn and acquire new knowledge in order to survive and progress in the present-day world The increased demand for learning entails that the educational process should have the most important role

4. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 The challenge Transformation of the educational system seems to be very slow Any new technology introduced in education soon becomes obsolete and ineffective, often causing confusion among teachers and students, instead of offering better education

5. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Peter’s first contact with FINKI His home school was similar to Plato’s Academia Experience with MENDO

6. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013

7. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 August 2012, Peter’s enrolment Enrolment coincided with BOI 2012 Will he be able to enroll? His colleague’s statement: “While iKnow exists, you should not worry.” eStudent Information System – iKnow

8. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013

9. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Peter’s first classes He entered the amphitheatre trying to be closer to the blackboard But, there was no blackboard there  Teacher uncovered the whiteboard and made a cable channels news’ presentation

10. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 First brunch First visit to the labs Computer’s local storage was almost empty But, there were several Internet browsers He twitted a short message with his first impressions: “The Faculty I chose must be in the clouds”

11. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Peter’s research What is cloud computing? Cloud computing and education Cloud computing and research

12. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Milestones of cloud computing Early 1960s, MIT: Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) Invented: Multitasking Time-sharing 2006, Amazon Web Services Initial aim: to create a balanced triangle between software, infrastructure and platform

13. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 New devices have affected learning as well e-Learning, m-Learning, s-Learning Cloud computing in education Key players: Amazon, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Oracle

14. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Cloudy education 2004, North Carolina State University: Virtual Computing Lab (VCL) powered by Apache Software Applications like Matlab, Maple, SAS, SPSS offered to more than 40000 students Oracle: Sun Cloud 2009, IBM: Cloud Academy (ICA) Sun Cloud retired, Exalogic Elastic Cloud and Exadata Database Machine were born Google Apps: Google Docs/ Drive, Google Talk, Google Video and Google Sites

15. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Cloudy Learning Management Systems BlackBoard/WebCT: xpLor Moodle + Amazon Web Services + BitNami Cloud Hosting: BitNami Moodle 2.4 Cisco Networking Academy + Canvas: Cisco NetSpace

16. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Cloudy research IBM and Google Cloud Computing University Initiative launched Cluster Exploratory (CluE) program Massive cloud cluster Hadoop performed more than 120 million computing tasks The mission accomplished: research and education of outstanding universities had enormously benefited from this program

17. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 The transformation Traditional blackboards  Interactive whiteboards Textbooks  Digital contents Books  Tablets, smartphones Internet cable connection  Wireless Internet Static E-learning 1.0  Dynamic E- learning 0.2

18. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Peter’s new smartphone A tool for ubiquitous access to: e-mails Facebook profile Internet Can he access something else?

19. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 FINKI in Microsoft’s clouds 2012/13: more than 3000 students Partnership with Microsoft: Office 365 Microsoft Live accounts / FINKI Live accounts Access to Microsoft software for educational purposes Microsoft SkyDrive

20. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Peter’s fascination Blockbuster movies Computer Animation Club Cloud solutions used: File sharing: Adrive, FilesFINKI, Dropbox Asset management system: Tactic Version control management: GitHub, BitBucket, Google Project Hosting and SVN Antivirus: Panda Cloud Antivirus

21. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Tactic and Bitbucket/Github

22. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Online communication

23. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Peter’s privacy concern To join or not to join?

24. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 FINKI in social media Enrolment procedure on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/FINKIedu Staff on LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/company/faculty-of- computer-science-and-engineering---skopje Future diploma: Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/finki-cse/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FINKI.ukim.mk Twitter: https://twitter.com/CSEedu

25. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013

26. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Systems integration Central Authentication System (CAS) CAS functionalities currently provided only to FINKI students and staff e-Student Information System iKnow Provided to University students and staff e-Learning systems: Moodle, LE e-Testing system: eTest and cloudy e-Assesment e-Assesment currently implemented in primary and secondary schools in Macedonia Online testing and laboratory exercises system eLab

27. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013

28. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013

29. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013

30. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 FINKI’s HPC High Performance Computing supercomputer: 84 servers Each server using 2 microprocessors (168 in total) Each processor having 6 cores (1008 cores in total) 2016 logical processors The blade servers are interconnected through Infiniband 84 separate links

31. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 The ambition Simultaneous implementation of all services by thousands of FINKI users proved their scalability The ambition: to successfully extend services from Faculty to University and in perspective from University to national level

32. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Cloud computing in education Few years ago, cloud computing in education was “ante portas” Nowadays, many cloud services have already become an ordinary solution FINKI uses many software solutions and various platforms as a service

33. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Is the perspective so pink? It can be Prerequisite: standardization To speed up important activities and functions, human beings standardise them We live in standard rooms, houses and cities, we transport using standard vehicles: cars, trains, boats or planes But, we still learn in traditional classrooms with chalks and blackboards

34. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Inspiration for the paper The intention to improve the learning process in line with new trends It is not exactly Peter’s experience, but rather the teachers’ challenge to prove that education can enormously benefit from new technologies The examples of recent modifications done at our Faculty are a significant contribution to education reconstruction and innovation Students’ favourable feedback encourages us to go further

35. 13 th Workshop “Software Engineering and Reverse Engineering” Bansko, 26 - 31 August 2013 Conclusion Emerging technologies and plentiful opportunities that they trigger don’t let us standardize learning and education Possibility to learn always, everywhere and by everyone makes standardization of the learning process easier said than done We should try to make it possible

36. Thank you for your attention