Introducing the eduCloud Consortium

Feb. 1, 2011 - PRLog -- Visions for Education, a New Jersey based non-profit organization, is proud to announce the launch of the eduCloud Consortium founded to inform the development of scalable learning services made available to students worldwide. eduCloud’s mission is to ensure equal access to digital learning opportunities for all children, young adults, and adult learners.  

“eduCloud’s mission is very ambitious but also very necessary to the future success of our children,” said Bruce Wilcox, Founding Chair, eduCloud Consortium and VP of Blended Learning at ClassLink. “Cloud services can provide a scalable learning infrastructure allowing schools to implement digital learning providing their students access to personalized and differentiated instruction.  With the burgeoning array of student ‘edge’ devices including laptops, netbooks, smartphones, slates and tablets, the eduCloud is essential to ensuring each student device is linked to scalable learning opportunities.”

eduCloud’s initial goal is to organize schools and the technology industry around a set of functional requirements to inform the development and application of K12 specific applications (content, tools, assessments, etc) hosted on or accessed through Cloud environments. eduCloud is defined as hosted platform with suitable scalability, redundancy, and capacity, to support a teaching and learning environment where every learner and educator has always-on, real-time access to personal and digital learning technology.  

The eduCloud Consortium is a membership organization comprised of Member companies, educational institutions, and a steering committee that develop the requirements, technical specifications, and ultimately products designed for K12 schooling. The Consortium anticipates that membership will be comprised of organizations from both public, Charter, and private schools, State and National education delegates, along with technology companies from around the globe.  

Here are what a few key partners have to say about the eduCloud Consortium:

“eduCloud has the potential to greatly expand access to learning systems, and thus learning opportunities, for children worldwide.  Broadening access to education to learners everywhere through cloud-based services and technology will be essential to fully realize the promise of cloud computing.”  Otto Berkes, General Manager, Office of the Chief Software Architect, Microsoft Corporation.

“Bring it on! Here in Maine, we’re ready. Our children have been doing personalized and digital learning for nearly 10 years now. We’re excited that eduCloud is being formed to accelerate digital learning, and I offer the Consortium my enthusiastic support.” – Angus King (Former Governor, State of Maine).

About eduCloud
The eduCloud Consortium is a project under the direction of Visions for Education, a registered 501c3 organization, with headquarters in New York, NY. eduCloud and its members inspire a global community of instructional technology developers, researchers in pedagogy, educators and students, to engage in the pursuit of boundless learning opportunities.  eduCloud describes a suite of services, providers, tools, and capabilities rendered in the Cloud to support the K12 institution, teachers, and students. eduCloud is comprised of a group of member organizations who, working through a collaborative process develop white papers, guidance documents, and act as a focal point to inform the provisioning of and access to, cloud services that are unique to the needs of the K12 industry and students worldwide.

“Laying the groundwork for cloud computing in the instructional setting and
building up an optimal and shared vision of cloud computing in education overall.”

Want to Know More about eduCloud?
Contact Bruce Wilcox, bwilcox@classlink.com, or visit www.educloudconsortium.org

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eduCloud Consortium is under the direction of Visions for Education. eduCloud members inspire a global community of instructional technology developers, researchers, educators and students, to engage in the pursuit of boundless learning opportunities.