Building Integrated E-Learning Environment Using Cloud Services and Social Networking Sites

Abstract

Cloud computing technologies, although in their early stages, have managed to change the way applications are going to be developed and accessed. These technologies are aimed at running applications as services over the internet on a flexible infrastructure. Microsoft Office applications, such as Word processing, Excel spreadsheet, Access database and many more can be accessed through the Internet, even though the files and applications are housed in the cloud. Cloud computing provides a low cost solution to academic institutions for their researchers, faculty, and students. This setup provides an additional benefit because all these browser-based applications can also be accessed through mobile devices in addition to being available to a variety of laptop and desktop computers, provided Internet access is available. At the same time, the massive growth of social networking sites (SNS) among today’s college students is increasing the number of higher education instructors that are combining distance education delivery with SNS. To take advantage of cloud computing and social networking sites, this chapter presents an integrated solution that provides learners with a comprehensive and feature rich environment for building and utilizing applications and can be used for building a virtual environment both for teaching and learning. The authors present an interactive tool that can be used for science education; they combined various technologies to achieve this goal. The environment and the design proposed can also be used as a platform for exploring and sharing new ideas as well as for designing, modifying, and monitoring educational or course contents. In this design under the same environment the authors also allow integration of different pedagogical approaches to both learning and teaching.