Thought grazing – Page 50

Attending my first meeting of the Cardiff University of the Third Age (U3A) Computer Group, I offered to write some notes to accompany the talk that was given on Data Storage in the Cloud by David Reeves. So here goes …
Computing has moved a long way from the days when all you stored on your computer were words and numbers. Gradually this has been extended to include first pictures, then audio, and then video. With the addition of these media so the requirements for memory to store them increased first by needing an increase in the Random Access Memory (RAM) that the computer had so that you could actually view or listen to the media, and then in the disk storage you needed to hold and recall the images or music at a later date.

This need for additional storage meant first the introduction of floppy disks, then hard disks inside the computer, then external hard disks connected usually to a USB port on your computer and then flash drives which you could carry around with you and then connect to a USB port on your computer.

With the changes in technology, so the amounts of information stored by each device increased. To give you an idea of how much this has changed you might like to look at the table below – which is actually out of date because you can now get both USB Memory Sticks and Hard Drives considerable larger than those quoted here.

If you want to read more about Information Storage including some technologies I’ve not discussed here such as CD/DVDs you could follow this link or this one, but there’s far more information in these articles than you need to understand why it might be a good idea to store information away from your computer – in the cloud.

Before we do that it might be a good idea to raise an issue that storing all this data causes – what happens if the device breaks, gets corrupted in some way, or just simply gets lost! Now, computer professionals have always done back-ups of their stored data (or they should have done), but the home computer user has never really put a value on their data UNTIL they lose it. So backing-up your data (stored information – words, numbers, images, music and videos) is actually an ESSENTIAL part of owning a computer. This article describes the various ways you might consider backing-up your data but at the bottom of the list is Cloud Storage and that’s where I’m going to take you now.

Wouldn’t it be great if every time you saved a picture, word processed document, spreadsheet … whatever, a copy was automatically made and stored away from your computer so whatever might happen to your computer, the most important part of it – the information it stored – was safe. That’s the essential value of Cloud Storage and the most important reason for using it. We’ll turn to the second most important reason – sharing information with others – later.

There are a number of Cloud Storage options you can use for free as long as you keep your storage below a certain limit. You can use as many as you want to and you might consider using different providers for different purposes. For instance I use Google Drive mainly for Photo Storage, Apple’s iCloud for documents, and Dropbox for sharing stuff. [I’ll maybe explain why I do this in another post.] The other main provider is Microsoft with their OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) offering, I don’t tend to use this much, but the principles for using it are much the same as the others.

So how do you use them? As I said above, the principles for each are much the same. I will use Google as the main example, and provide links to the others as well.

Google Drive. You will need a Google Account. This is a good idea in any case as it allows you to create another eMail account – I’m a strong advocate for having more than one eMail address anyway (see Point 3 in this post). Go to Google Accounts to setup your Google ID – you can use your existing eMail address if you want to. Then with your account set up you can go to this page. I would suggest you download the applications for your desktop as well as setting it up for your browser. Installing the application on your Windows PC, or your Apple Mac, will then create a Folder in which you can store information and which then will then be backed-up to your Google Drive “in the cloud”. Voila – you have peace of mind that your precious information has been saved. Any changes you make to the information will be synchronised with the version saved on your cloud storage.

For Dropbox go to this link and create your account, perhaps using the Google email address you’ve just created above – a lot of services allow you to link to your Google ID and this means you don’t have to remember lots of IDs and Passwords.

If you’re an Apple user (iMac, MacBook, iPhone, iPad, etc) it makes sense to use iCloud. Even if you’re not, you can still add an iCloud Drive to your desktop and access the 5Gb of free storage you’re provided with “in the cloud”.

If you’re a Microsoft (Windows and Office) user it makes sense to use OneDrive. Like iCloud you get 5Gb of free storage from this link. You may also find that you are offered the option of installing OneDrive when you install Microsoft Office (or Office 365).

Finally sharing information with others. I don’t think I can improve on David’s demonstration and on this YouTube video …

I’ve focussed on using a Folder on your desktop/laptop machine to backup or synchronise files to your Cloud Storage. Remember also that David demonstrated how you can Upload a file using your web browser (I would recommend using Google Chrome) from your desktop to your Cloud Storage.

This is the text of a post I was invited to contribute to the Institutional Web Managers Workshop (IWMW) Blog as a retrospective to a presentation that Joe gave at the Workshop in 2009.

When Joe Nicholls and I started our conversation back in 2007 on what the IT Services role should look like in the age of “disruptive technologies”, we had a vision that things were never going to be the same again. Indeed in a farewell valedictory at the Welsh Universities IT Services Gregynog Colloquium in 2010 I gave a talk entitled “So that’s it for IT Services … or is it?” after previously writing “We’re all doomed …“. Therefore when Brian invited me to reflect on the relevance of the talk “Servicing ‘Core’ and ‘Chore’” that we presented at IWMW 2009 to the institution today, it set up a whole stream of thoughts running – which have taken some time to commit to words.

First of all I’m extremely grateful for two recent posts by Derek Law (on this blog) and Martin Weller (on the Ed Techie blog) which gave me the courage to proceed when I was beginning to feel that I had no place, being now a number of years out of active institutional web and IT Services involvement, to express any views – let alone suggest they might be relevant! Apparently I’m not completely out of step.

Essentially “‘Core’ and ‘Chore'” is about giving a different perspective – in fact a users perspective – on what an IT Service function needs to deliver in terms of service offering. It is an explicitly user-centric view of IT Services, as it looks to provide the user with the tools THEY require, and with the support THEY need to make full use of them. This is what we have called enablement. As a precursor to enablement, you need to go through a process of envisioning the possibilities that are available and how they might be incorporated into a users’ way of working and then engagement with the user, and as a result of following this process in partnership with the user, you aspire to deliver excellent education. We presented these ideas in a paper at Eunis 2009.

Just words I hear you say, but look at a few of the slides from Joe’s slideset and then judge the relevance to your institution today.

The individual researcher or student has a completely different view of what they want, and need, from an IT service offering. All they require are tools and training in their use to get the educational task done. This is core to them.

For them the interaction with corporate systems is a chore, often an unpleasant diversion from getting things done!

This leads into a conflict because much of what the individual requires is outside the institutional firewall, and by its placement “in the cloud” is “not controllable” by the organisation. I have discussed governance and security elsewhere and previously, and don’t intend to follow that up here. Suffice to say, both issues can be resolved, through trust and education. Working in partnership. Thus we arrive at this seeming impasse …

The ‘core’ services and activities to the institution are the ‘chore’ to the individual. The ‘core’ services and activities to the individual are often not identified by the institution as necessary, or at worst are actively prevented from happening.

I would love to be able to say that I am confident that what Joe and I presented back in 2009 at IWMW has now been committed to the Room 101 of institutional web history as having been acknowledged, accepted and actioned. I fear it hasn’t. In fact I know it hasn’t as the horror stories of failed collaboration across institutions, of difficulties in migrating content into, out of and between institutions, and the failure of the very seemingly straightforward task of ensuring proper archiving of digital content is accessible outside the institution, continue seemingly in an unremitting manner.

So I conclude with just one plea for institutional web managers. I realise that you will most certainly not be in a position to alter institutional strategy, but please just please remember the individual in your service offering. Be prepared to readily provide advice on setting up a personal web presence outside the institution – that means providing advice on getting personal or project domains. Be open to the probability that researchers will want to port content out of institutional systems when they move, or retire, and have a way that enables them to do that easily. Be aware that digital content only lasts as long as it is archived properly – boring I know but time spent now will prevent tears later on. Be an envisioned and engaged web manager, enabling the user to achieve their educational objectives. Your attendance at IWMW 20, suggests that you are well on the way to doing this.

Category: Thought grazing

Core and chore, or me and more disruptive thinking